Truemed raises $34M Series A led by a16z to unlock HSA/FSA spending on preventive health

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Uh this is wild. Well, uh, if you want a vape pen, maybe you should try and pay with it with pre-tax dollars using TrueMed. We have Justin Mayers. He's going to tell us that you can't do that. I'm going to tell him

I absolutely can. Stop me.

And I will I will be buying a vape pen on this. We were We Justin, welcome back to the show. Great to see you. Happy New Year.

John wants to vape Chinese peptides.

No, no. So, I don't I actually don't, but I do want to I want you to tell me how I can use Trummed to build the ultimate looks maxing stack. I want to pay for with my looks maxing stack.

Yeah. What are you What are you What are you What's your

You've clearly been since you've been on the show, you've

Your cheeks are red. I can see you've been bone smacking. You're just talking about the fit, right?

Your midface ratio is completely different than the last time we saw you. Something's clearly going on. True Med clearly helping. Anyway, uh how are you doing? What's new? Uh I'm I'm doing phenomenally. Uh doing so well. And you know, one of the things that that I've been using from a health standpoint is obviously bone broth. And you know, all of the health benefits that come with

one hand washes the other.

Wait. So So you literally smash the bones to make the bone broth. Correct. So you've been in bone smashing for a decade now.

His family actually made their money in bone smashing.

They It is a bone smashing company. Might be [laughter] the best pure play bone smashing company there is. Arguably

we were decades ahead of Clavvicular. And

I think you were.

Yeah. We need a looks max index

for sure. For sure.

Exactly.

Kettle Kettle and Fire can be when when you guys go public. [laughter] We'll put it in there.

Yeah. Anyway, uh ju just reset the story for us. What's the news? Uh you you picked the worst possible day to announce it, but uh but give it to us. You guys through there wasn't a lot.

It was sort of a quiet day, but yeah. Yeah. Take us through it.

Very quiet day.

Take us through.

Yeah. I mean, so so we we finally announced that we raised $34 million for Trummed as part of the series A. So,

first hit.

Hit it.

I love I love how it shakes shakes the whole camera. [laughter]

The first

2026 is going to be a big year for you guys.

The first 2026 gong hit. Um anyway, so $34 million. Uh wait, wait, wait. So, so when did the deal happen? What what was the thesis around launching it? Uh the announcement when you did? Yeah. So, it happened like earlier last year, in the first half of last year, but we we basically had a bunch of different things happening at the company level. We wanted to tie it up with a bunch of different announcements. We grew three times, which was fully baked by the end, which is great. Yeah. Uh and so kind of like packaged everything up and decided to announce and kind of mention that, you know, that this this thing that we're doing and this movement that we're building around incentivizing people to invest in prevention and invest in their health while they still have it, uh is a big thing. And it's a thing that tech and other people are are paying attention to and waking up to.

Want to announce that later in the year

and and and has the elevator pitch changed to consumers or the the companies that you're working with? Like how are you positioning the actual value prop of True Med like getting people on board?

Yeah. I mean so so to brands like Pelaton, Eight Sleep, Lifetime, those are our partners. You know, it's it's quite easy like for many of these brands. Yeah. Like for for many of these brands Exactly. Eight. uh if you're many of these brands like they they're they realize that they are selling a product that oftentimes is expensive and so if someone can use pre-tax funds and save 25 to 50% you know if you're like in the max tax bracket and live in California you can save 50%. buying a getting an eight sleeper or a Pelaton at 50% off is like quite a material thing. And so we have we have merchant partners where we're doing 15 20% of their total sales are going through True Med. And for the individual, you know, if if you're someone with an HSA or FSA account, historically these accounts have been used under this idea of like wait until you get sick, get cancer, need surgeries, need like pharmaceuticals late in life, and then you have a tax advantage account that can pay for everything once you're sick. And you know, the IRS has been clear like the average American is sick today. We should be spending these these dollars on things that studies show are effective at treating or preventing different diseases. And so that's what Trumat enables.

And what's the status of the of like HSA? It's usually like an option and you have to pick a specific uh health care plan to be eligible. Is that right? Like like are HSAs booming? Are people adopting them? Like what's the actual flow to get one and start?

I maxed out my HSA this year. because of True Med on our TBPN plan.

Yes. [laughter]

Yeah. I mean, HSAs are growing quite a lot. They grew around 11% uh last year. I think over the last 3 years that they that's been about right like 10 to 15% uh growth. Our thesis though is that you know, you ask the average person like you, Jordy, before True came along like what is an HSA? Do you have one? Why should you care about it? The average person just has no idea. Like they just do not care. It's considered almost like a boomer savings account. And so one of our hypotheses is that these accounts historically have been high friction and you can't use them on anything that you actually want to prevent disease. Like who cares about buying band-aids taxfree? And so our hypothesis is like if you can buy something pay for lifetime membership uh pay for aids, pay for these different things that um you know assuming that you qualify that many many more people will actually sign up and fund these accounts. And like I I think that over the next decade there could be a trillion dollars in HSA and FSA accounts even without any regulatory changes or any anything like that.

Uh could is it possible to pull a PT and put uh startup equity in an HSA? Could I could I throw could I throw a few shares?

Do you have any availability like trade in the HSA? Is that a thing people can do?

That that's definitely a thing people can do. Uh it's not something that Trummed [laughter] necessarily supports yet. Uh but it's a thing people can do. I mean I don't know if like there's a an HSA PT out there yet, but [laughter]

why do you do do you think we can move? So So uh Trummed is a company that uh to me is shockingly political. Like some people hear about what True Med does and they get angry. They're like, "No, you should only be able to spend your HSA funds once you're deathly ill. you shouldn't be able to use an you shouldn't be able to use it to buy something that helps you exercise that even though we know exercise extends your lifespan. So it's like it's just like crazy crazy that we're in a place that um you know spending spending HSA funds is like political and people are angry about it. Do you have any uh do you have optimism around that changing over time? Is is this just kind of the nature? So much of health is just deeply political. Um,

yeah. I mean, honestly, one of one of the biggest disappointments that I've had in the last couple years is seeing health become political. Like, somehow you have a former, you know, Democratic candidate for president that is now part of the Trump administration who's talking about health and it like means it's a it's a right-wing issue somehow. Uh I think that there's always going to be people that look at this like within the industry, you know, I I came as an outsider from the industry, started Kettle on Fire before this and within the industry it's still like controversial somewhat whether like bug spray should be HSA or FSA eligible. Like the industry is just very very behind and very stuck in the ways of and under the assumptions that the average American is healthy and HSA and FSA accounts are there and exist to help people pay for healthcare when they're sick. on the rare occasion that people are sick. That was true like 22 years ago when these accounts were were started when you know when Congress basically created these accounts. I just think those default assumptions are no longer true. Like you look around and the average American today is sick. Like you know 70% of Americans are are overweight or obese. 93% have at least a metabolic marker of of dysfunction. Like we are an incredibly sick country, among the sickest countries in the world. And in my view, HSAs and FSAs are one of the best tools that we have in our admittedly very broken health care system to try and direct funds towards prevention and towards root cause interventions that can actually make people healthier and treat and prevent many of the chronic conditions people struggle with. Uh and so

is there is there a lot of volume uh happening on True Med that's going towards um uh like WGOI and people paying out of pocket for weight loss uh treatment products or is that is that separate?

No. So so as of right now we don't support GLP1s like what what true you know I would say that the healthcare industry as a whole the payment rails are relatively good at allowing people to pay for pharmaceuticals. Like if you want to pay for pharmaceuticals you can use an HSA today. But aren't a lot of people paying for GLP1s out of pocket or is it

Yeah, they can but but HSA for many people is considered out of pocket as well. Um and because it's like they they can direct where they where and how they spend these funds. They're their own funds just they're taxfree. Yeah.

Uh and so what what we are basically doing is we are trying to make it legible and bring online a bunch of effective lifestyle interventions, exercise, sleep, supplements, things like that that the traditional healthare system like right now doesn't really know how to think about and people don't really know how to pay for it. So is there like a big roadmap for you on new verticals that you want to bring online? Is there a process for like actually getting something approved to work with TrueMed? Like did you start with eight sleeps and then you added Pelaton and it was like a different process or is there just one bucket and you can throw whatever you need into it and you just sign the companies as they come up.

Yeah. So we we basically we have a medical advisory board and a medical team and we basically look at when a when an intervention comes to us when a brand or a merchant comes to us and they say hey we want to work with True Med. We basically look at a couple things like what what do the studies say about how effective a certain intervention is? Uh based on that like what conditions will that intervention be effective for you know like you can't get exercise to treat like a toe fungus or something like that like that would be a bad intervention like a a doctor would never prescribe that. And so what we are basically looking for is something like exercise. What are the conditions that exercise as an intervention can treat reverse or alleviate? That's the IRS standard. and assuming that there's a good amount of data research supports that intervention uh and then we talk to our clinical team and we decide can we support or or not a specific intervention and so we have a bunch of things exercise sleep supplements and the like that we support today a big thing that I want to unlock this year is food like if if you look at the data ch like medically tailored meals have incredible efficacy incredible ROI but they're very complicated to you know it's very complicated and the IRS frankly has like a heart attack when And they hear people are using HSA or FSA to spend on food cuz like on raising canes.

Yeah. [laughter] Chicken fingers. Chicken finger dream. I have my chicken finger dream is chicken fingers via my Trum account.

Yeah. [laughter]

No. Uh no. You're you're talking about like actual like you know properly portion.

Yeah. I mean there's there's been like a whole history of companies that have tried to do uh sort of like portion control, meal prep. There's been a number of different kits. Obviously, there's varying levels of efficacy, but in theory, that's a really great intervention. I mean, it just seems so obvious like like you you go to any health and wellness influencer, and before they tell you about the six different types of magnesium or something, like they're going to lay down the law, which is sleep, diet, and exercise. Sleep, diet, and exercise. And so, it feels like those three should be on True Med first before, you know, the even the creatine gets on there or something, and the supplements. Um but uh but obviously like food it feels like it's a challenge. So you're working on that. So is that is that a goal for 2026 or

100%. I I would say that is one of our big goals for this year especially as like tens of millions of Americans are going to be on GLP1s. Things like eating more nutritionally dense food getting more protein like these things really really matter or even things like GLP1s to to work over any long period of time.

Yeah, too right. uh is% place where people people miss out if they're on GLP ones.

Uh how are you? Uh how big is the team?

Uh we are 51 people now.

51 people. And like what's your kind of like personal ethos as a CEO around uh building a company like this as you know every single day we have more and more AI progress. Are you pushing the team to to to are you pushing everybody on the team to to like you know use the tools uh as effectively as they can? Like where are you getting the most leverage all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, I mean we're we're certainly pushing the engineering team uh to to use things like cloud code and whatnot all the time. I think that where we are getting the most leverage and where we have started to focus is leveraging a lot of these tools specifically on the like prototyping side of things. Like we recently stood up a team within Trummed that it's basically me and like two other people where we're calling it like the venture bets team. It's basically the team that just like moves fast, tries things, prototype stuff and sees if it works or not. Uh and the goal there is basically to unlock a new line of revenue, you know, over the next 12 to 18 months. And for that we are basically doing using almost entirely AI tooling to spin up, you know, landing pages, mini products, like all these sorts of things that are not exactly built to like scale. They're not built for, you know, 6ix9ines uptime or anything like this, but just with the pure goal of like get as many shots on goal and many as many iterations as possible. And so that that's how personally we're we're starting to use it a lot.

I feel like do you identify with the label like fintech? Is that a fair category or do you think of yourself as like a different category?

He he'll say he's finance tech.

Finance tech. [laughter]

Yeah, I I [clears throat] would say definitely we're a fintech company right now.

Yeah. Yeah, that's fair, right? Um well, the question I ask is because um do you like uh do you have uh any like are you at war with people that are trying to do fraud on the platform? I feel like that's like a permanent uh background noise if you're a fintech company, but I don't know if you operate at like an abstraction layer where that's kind of like oh you're it's not a headache for you. Is it a headache or

mo most pay like a company that does payments online typically is incentivized like it's set up in a way it's like business joins platform moves money. We want more businesses joining the platform moving money. I think that you guys are uh I'm sure people have tried stuff but feel pretty insulated from that kind of like large

I mean it's not a payroll company so you can't just immediately do moneyaundering but but is there is there a like a like a fraud fighting team or how have you addressed that? Is it even a problem?

Yeah. So I mean it has been a small problem but it's been a thing that like honestly Stripe's tools are

pretty darn good and like we we build on top of Stripe. They're quite good. Uh, and so it hasn't been the thing where we're like throwing personnel at it or anything like that. Uh, but yeah, I mean certainly a the most possible boring explanation of Trummed is like we're a B2B SAS company that does compliance for HSA and FSA, you know, and like given that like that we're definitely a fintech company.

Uh, New Year's resolutions, do you have any? Do you think they are effective for living a healthier life? What do you think of New Year's resolutions?

I personally I find them great. I I actually just had my first kid though, so I'm sort of like resolutions out the window.

Figuring out the

keep on keeping on

100%.

But we were talking we were talking a few days ago and you said uh it's amazing and super underrated which is a which is wildly different than another person that we were talking [laughter] about earlier on the show that said

missing something.

Yeah. Yeah. Similar name. Similar name. Um what about uh what about like big trends in 2026? I feel like you have seen basically every health trend between two and six years early. Uh what do you think we're going to be talking about this year?

Well, let's get into let's get into I think the thing that that's been going the most most talked about.

I [laughter] mean that is in my world that's the most

tied to that, but peptides.

Oh, peptides. Sure. Okay. Let's start with peptides. So, what I I did I did a

my first peptide cycle probably 5 years ago at this point. Uh I'm now at the point where so many people are trying so many different things and there's and I did this at a time I did this at a time when I was like

there's there's really no like large scale studies on this

but anecdotally I knew people that had done it.

Sure.

And they done they they tried them for you know you do it as a cycle. No, nobody even back then was saying take this and never stop taking it. Right. There were also some really big high-profile like the uh Hugh Jackman Wolverine like everyone saw that and we're like oh whatever that he did

peptides or just anabolic

I think that was BPC57 corre I don't know anyone know anyone know

I don't think so no that's the Wolverine peptide

okay I just mixed them up I don't know

it's Wolverine [laughter] it's Wolverine peptide because it helps like

oh recovery recovery maybe it was just gear

um but I but but my concern with peptides is like you basically I just look at them as like slightly toned down like anabolics steroids that are more targeted in in terms of what they do. And so when you have like millions of people that are just kind of buying them from random sites online, they can be contaminated. I have a lot of like a lot of red flags around that. I'm not kind of diving in uh any deeper.

So peptides fouian bargain or not?

I I think that these are going to be incredible tools. I think that the FDA is probably going to release much needed guidance around them this year. Like there's just too many Americans that are buying cheap for research purposes only peptides right now. You know, it's it's just gotten too big that the FDA has to do something. Like I I personally know a bunch of people that swear by these things. The efficacy is there and you know they're certainly like they're indogenous. Like your body makes them in many cases. Uh

I'm very bullish on them from an efficacy standpoint. I have tons of questions about quality. And I think for me the thing that you just have to wonder on all these things is like one thing that our current FDA does a very good job of with pharmaceuticals is figuring out are there any sort of like side effects. So like does pancreatitis risk go up 12% you know when you take this thing over of a year period or whatever and like no one is looking at those sort of longtail effects of peptides. Certainly not when you're looking at staying on these things combining them with other peptides over you know some long period of time. So I would say that I'm like bullish but cautious whereas I think most of the people in peptides right now are sort of like ripping it.

Yeah, [laughter] exactly. It does. It does [clears throat] feel like we're in a new era of just experimentation and just like I don't know like like a couple decades ago like like a TRT or something was something that was like buried in a built bodybuilding forum and you had to know a guy and now it's like here's the website that was perfectly coded and we'll just deliver it to your door and it's like a completely different it's way yeah it's way more like user experience focused and like just way less risk. I mean, we've seen this with all sorts of substances and just activities where uh you know, we've we've productized them in in the way America does best or it becomes a button.

And I mean, that that's totally true. I also think to be fair, this is like the health stuff is the biggest problem in the country in my mind. Like the average American is sick. The average American has bad sleep. They have bad energy. like the demand for something that can promise you feel better, your joints feel better, you're sleeping, you're losing weight is like off the charts has never been higher. And so I think given that like there's just infinite demand for products that can make someone feel better, give them more energy, lose weight, sleep better, whatever. Uh which is why I'm just I I think peptides are going to be one of the biggest trends of the next 5 years. Certainly, they're going to come with side effects and downsides. Yeah. But they're going to be here.

Yeah. Yeah. Underrated story about American competition. the whole story of how novo like came up with all this stuff and then just got like kind of beat in the public markets by Americans just being like we're where like the American biotech industry like really ripped it. Anyway, uh other trends

Novo ha habin and series [laughter]

I mean basically uh I mean they had that problem with like the the they didn't file the the IP rule or something the registration

what's the what's the state of Austin we've had we Sachs is is opening an office

lots of people are getting out of California make the pitch for Austin

yeah give us on Austin

yeah look Austin's great I I think that Austin will do well to the extent that California decides to self emilate and it seems like right now California is [snorts] like just pouring gas on the fire. So, uh you know, we we'll see if the wealth tax thing actually goes through or even gets a a medium amount of popular support then yeah like there is going to be a huge exodus from Silicon Valley from LA to other places all over the country.

Is it Austin bust? Is it Austin or bust or or are there tech people that are going to Dallas or

Highland Park? What about the I I could see some allocators ending up in Highland Park.

Highland Park is in Los Angeles.

No, no. Highland Park I is a neighborhood in Dallas.

Oh, it is. Okay.

I've only been to Dallas once. It's I don't think anyone's going to Dallas.

No one's going to Dallas. So, if a tech person's leaving San Francisco, they're going to Austin.

I I I think it's basically Austin. Maybe Boulder or Denver. Maybe Miami. Although, I think the Miami thing was kind of not a real thing. Personally, personally, I'm more of an Abalene guy.

Abene. [laughter] Straight to the data center. Energy.

Straight to the data center. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I'm an Alaska guy. I I I say get up there. It's nice and cold. There's no tech.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're locked in. But, uh, anyway, any any other are there any other predictions for just health trends or foods or anything that's like, uh, rising and falling? Are we have we finally reached peak slop bowl? Are we [laughter] going in a different direction?

No, I'm going to go get a protein cup from from Chipotle later.

Wait, is that real? Are the restaurants really like downsizing in reaction to GOP ones or is that just like, you know, some random organic thing that's happening?

You you are seeing uh certain grocery chains, especially ones that sell a lot of junk food, are starting to downsize or see like junk food sales go down. Okay. Mainly because people are less hungry and most of junk food is predicated on like people eating them infinitely while snacking all day. Yeah.

And so I do think there's going to be a renewed focus on nutrient density, on protein, on things like this. I think you have to imagine like a big trend that I'm bullish on is these GOP ones are going to be everywhere. You know, we have the oral version of Ozic coming this year. Uh there's going to be 50 million Americans on these things in the next 5 years. I think there's going to be a backlash where people start to see what are the downsides. they start to, you know, get caught up in like micronutrient deficiencies and other sorts of things that just come from, you know, if even if you're eating a bad diet, but you're eating less of it, you're still going to have health problems even if you may be, you know, less overweight or less obese than you were previously. And I think we'll start to underwrite that more over the next couple years.

Makes sense. Well, it'll be interesting to track that.

Well, this is your second time on the show.

Yeah.

Let's make it Let's make it a monthly thing.

Yeah. Next time you're in LA, there's a lot to talk about

and we love you.

This is fantastic.

Love you guys. Thanks for the merch. Happy New Year. Talk to you soon.

Talk soon.

Goodbye.

Bye.

Let me tell you about 11 Labs. Build intelligent realtime conversational agents. Reimagine human technology interaction with 11 Labs

or in our case

theme song.

Our theme song was generated by 11 Labs. Uh do you want to do some timeline? How how long how long do you want to go? Because we could close with this post. this very optimistic post from Elon Musk replying to Mark Andre. Mark Andre says, "It's time to grow." This is in response to uh 4.3% year-over-year GDP growth in Q3. Kind of crazy. Didn't see that coming, says Calib Hammer. And Elon says doubledigit growth is coming within 12 to 18 months. If applied intelligence is in proxy for economic growth, which it should be, tripledigit is possible in five years. Let's pray for tip tripledigit GDP growth. It would truly be a golden era. A lot of bottlenecks to that, but let's hope it happens.

I like the sound of that, John. Uh that's a good place to end.

I think that's a great place to end. We'll cover Lulu's post tomorrow. Lulu is actually coming on the show this week. Uh and also, yeah, tomorrow. So, Gabe, you you got exactly what you're what you're looking for. Uh and also, we'll have to discuss the the prediction about OpenAI buying Pinterest. That's an interesting one to te to to to kick around. It was very funny because it was a it was just a prediction post from the information, but people were reporting on it like it's a rumor or like it's a it's like like a fact or something. Uh but there's a lot to dig into there. But anyway, thank you so much for watching. So good to be back with all of you. Thank you for tuning in. Uh we seriously missed doing this. As a couple of Irishmen,

we yearn for labor. We learn to be on the mics uh tilling the RSS feed. Uh, [laughter] and uh, uh, thank you uh, thank you for being a part of this. Uh, we're so excited for this year. It's going to be a lot of fun. Huge.

And, uh, we hope you have a great Monday.

Talk to you soon. Goodbye. Bye.