Zero

Zero began as Kevin Rose's weekend app, handed to a founder who fasted through chemo. Mike Maser did a 5-day water fast around each of six chemotherapy rounds, based on Walter Longo's early mouse research. Kevin Rose visited him in hospital, saw a product that could bring people into fasting, and told Mike "Sure, take it."

Mike's scan after two of six rounds showed no detectable cancer, though he credits "a combination of things" and luck, not fasting alone. True Ventures, where Mike worked after selling Fitstar to Fitbit, seed funded Zero with Tony Conrad.

Subversive

One rewarding action, a few times a week, was the whole product. Kevin Rose built the first version over a weekend: one screen, a fasting timer, no sign-up and no monetization. A basic subscription turned on around 2016-17 reached about $5M ARR within half a year.

Kevin's bet was that people would enjoy "just to see time move" while doing something healthy. Mike admits his own instinct is to overcomplicate, as if complexity were more defensible. The app is fuller today, but the first screen is still a timer, running or waiting to start.

Subversive▶ 22:05

Zero arrived as fasting went mainstream, with almost no app store rivals. Huberman and Attia made fasting a common topic and Condé Nast titles covered it, while Zero sat nearly alone in the app store. First users were coastal men around 30 from the biohacking crowd, and podcast and media outreach then pulled in a mainstream audience.

Mike credits timing, not engineering the trend: "we were early but not too early." He compares fasting to meditation, an ancient practice rediscovered 5 to 10 years earlier.

Subversive▶ 25:58

Medical credibility and restrained marketing won over skeptical users. Zero invested in science-backed content and hired chief medical officers with decades of metabolic health experience, avoiding the swimsuit-model, overpromising ads common among fasting apps. Users told others the company was legit.

Mike says no other fasting app has had a chief medical officer. A user quote he cites: "They're not just about 6 weeks to six-pack abs."

Subversive▶ 27:25

An unsolicited Elon Musk tweet brought about $1M in a day. Musk tweeted that Zero was "quite good" with no outreach behind it, and sales exploded to about $1 million in a single day.

Zero had a few similar moments, but Mike says they are "nothing you can engineer" and cannot replace a growth engine.

Subversive▶ 29:46

A simple product with nothing behind it is easy to clone. Once Zero succeeded, competitors copied its UI pixel for pixel, some even using its name. Mike calls simplicity without distribution, community or other stickiness "a very compromised moat."

He says this matters more now that AI makes interfaces easy to clone. The host adds that simplicity gets a product started, but community and compounding loops must be built around it.

Subversive▶ 24:23

After 2023, rivals' growth and monetization skill outpaced Zero's better product. Organic growth and earned media peaked around 2022-23. Since then, copycats with sophisticated growth and monetization tactics have left Zero playing catch-up.

Mike calls his plan of building a great product and growing by word of mouth outmoded: "it's not just about product. So much of it is about the growth stack."

Subversive▶ 31:01

Zero overspent on operating costs even while revenue was strong. Mike says Zero "way overinvested" in opex in the late 2010s and early 2020s and would run those years more responsibly. It is now reining in spending, helped by AI.

The host adds that growing organically before heavy Meta spend and hiring only helps.

Subversive▶ 48:30

Plan the distribution strategy first, then build the product to fit. With AI making software cheap and fast to build, Mike and the host say the bottleneck for consumer apps is now distribution. Founders should decide how they will grow, then work backwards to the product.

Subversive▶ 32:12

Zero tracked its users moving onto GLP-1s and changed course. The share of users on a GLP-1 rose from about 5% at the start of 2025 to about a third by May 2026, with another third interested or actively seeking one. That data convinced Zero to add a GLP-1 offering rather than ignore the drug.

The figures come from Zero's own survey data.

Subversive▶ 34:54

Protein and hydration tracking served fasters and GLP-1 users alike. In 2025 Zero built a food tracker with photo-based protein tracking and a hydration tracker. Fasters eat less and need to protect muscle, and GLP-1 users face muscle loss and dehydration.

Mike says the features "could serve sort of both masters" and laid the foundation for a responsible GLP-1 product.

Subversive▶ 38:14

Zero positions itself as the way off the drug, not onto it forever. Telehealth GLP-1 rivals earn $100 to $500 a month by keeping patients on the drug with no exit. Zero plans to prescribe it, guide users through it, then be a home base for keeping weight and metabolic health after they stop.

Mike says the most common problem after stopping is that weight returns along with muscle loss. He calls the position disarming and has not seen it done elsewhere: "we want you in our house because it's a healthy house."

Subversive▶ 40:00

Launch to the owned audience and tell the story before buying users. Zero will take the GLP-1 offering first to its 10 million registered users, including people who churned because they went on a GLP-1 and felt the app no longer fit. It also plans to do PR for the first time, putting its chief medical officer and history in front of the media.

Mike expects paid acquisition to be a weak spot learned along the way, so Zero will lead with brand, 8 years of trust and the existing audience. The product had not launched, so there is no evidence yet on revenue or churn.

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