How Noom Avoided PMF Collapse in the Wake of GLP-1s

N's curriculum is built off of CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy and it's a type of therapy that is is really helping people kind of connect their thoughts to their feelings to like the behaviors that they then make. I think our onboarding flow is in many ways that aha moment for people, right? The the questions, the tone, the understanding makes them believe that this program is going to work for them and solve this problem that they've had for their entire life. A large portion of successful weight loss journeys have these hiccups, right? It's not uncommon.

Just because you fell off the wagon for a week or two doesn't mean that you're a failure, right? And I think normalizing that uh and then effectively getting people to kind of recommmit was a pretty massive uh improvement to engagement and retention. Welcome to Subversive, a podcast dedicated to sharing stories from the best consumer subscription apps in the world. We'll bring you lessons for how to grow your consumer subscription business, including insights and inflection points that led to exponential growth from leaders at category defining companies and innovative startups.

Let's get into the show. My guest today is Bren Zedikowski, the VP of product growth at N, which is one of the world's largest online weight loss platforms. In this episode, I talked to Brent about N's unconventional longboarding flow, about a few of the company's most successful AB tests, and about how N has adapted its product and business model in response to the recent proliferation of GLP-1 weight loss medications. All right, welcome Brent to this Subversive podcast. Uh, excited to have you on today to talk about N. We've known each other for a couple years now. I know we collaborated together on the guest post for Lenny's newsletter last year and I've learned a lot from you about product growth uh over the last 12 to 24 months. U but today would love to just talk a little bit more about your background and your role now as the VP of growth at N. Um as well as some of the major inflection points that have

driven N's growth over the last many

years. Um for those who don't know, let's just start with a little bit of background on what N does um and and a little bit of background on you and how you made your way there. >> Sure. Yeah. So, you know, N is uh it's one of the leading platforms for preventive health and and uh longevity solutions and weight loss, right? Really being kind of the main entry point there. Our our mission is to empower everyone everywhere to live better every day. N, you know, has had a long long history. Um, but as I mentioned, kind of took off with that psychology based weight loss offering, Nate, uh, which, you know, really is designed to kind of help people build better habits with the goal of of of losing, you know, losing weight. Uh we've since expanded our offerings in the past couple of years, really kind of leaning into some of the tech technological advances with GLP-1s.

Uh starting to add uh more clinical access and access to medication uh with our GLP-1 program and our new micro dose GLP1 program. Um and kind of that trend is going to be continuing to expand over the next couple years as we move further into longevity space and and broader preventive health. >> Awesome. And before we get more into N's story, let's hear a little bit more about you. So you've been in product and specifically product growth roles for quite a while now. What are some of the other stops you've had in your career and what brought you to N in the first place? I I started my like I studied computer engineering in school. Um so I studied a lot of uh both both the hardware side and the software side and uh what I very quickly learned is that I did not have the patience for hardware.

So I started my career in a software engineering role uh at Trip Adviser which had a you know a very experiment-driven culture. Uh while I was there I was lucky enough to have mentors and um and bosses who gave me the opportunity as an engineer to actually go and start to define and build and run and analyze my own experiments. Um and eventually kind of use that to weasel my way into a product role. And so did that for a few years at Trip Adviser. eventually uh shifted to Wisant which is a an edtech tutoring marketplace um where I kind of leaned a bit more into like the growth space uh working a lot on acquisition SEO kind of that onboarding flow experimentation um and then uh the opportunity at N came up uh which you know when I joined was uh in 2020 um very fast-paced time uh for the company a lot growth people were uh kind of you know a bit more bound to their house and able to focus on their habits.

So the company was going through a lot of growth then um and and the culture itself was yeah I think just very fast-paced um so I had a lot of opportunity to kind of work on various parts of of the business acquisition retention everything in between um and kind of just expanded my responsibilities over time to to the current role. Well, let's jump into it. We're going to talk about a few of the inflection points that N has experienced over the last few years. And let's start with the famous or infamous, depending on your perspective, N longboarding flow. There has been a lot of ink spilled on this topic over the years.

And obviously, it's been a huge success for you all, but it's sort of uh unconventional in the sense that it's much longer than a lot of other consumer onboarding flows. So, maybe to start

with, what's the backstory behind the long onboarding flow and and how did it originate at new? I'd say the origin really just well first of all it came before a bit of my time at N. Um uh I think even when I joined right it it was a it's a common thing for most folks who join N who the first thing they want to do is shorten the the the flow and uh I can't say I was an exception to that. Um I think what it came from though the origin really is is it stemmed from the culture of the company this culture of first principal thinking always questioning assumptions you know being willing to test different things. So it it meant that there you know rarely did you get a no that you can't try something um there were never hard caps on what uh what you can do even if you know best practices said otherwise. um as long as there was kind of like something uh driving that from a first principal standpoint, it was all, you

know, we were always willing to to test stuff and I think uh it landed where it did kind of following the winds along the way. >> Got it. And how has that longboarding flow evolved over time? It sounds like it came about because and I know N has this history of challenging conventional wisdom, thinking about things from first principles. uh it sounds like it it originated before you joined the company. Um but what what was the impetus to making it such a long and uh personalized onboarding flow in the first place and then has it gotten longer over the years? Has it gotten shorter? Like what what are some of the major evolutions that have occurred uh over over the time you've been there?

>> The the one interesting thing to chat about is is that conventional wisdom. Um >> you know, I think the the conventional wisdom is really trying to you want your onboarding flow to get people to that aha moment as fast as possible. You know, when you think about like what the aha moment is, it's like they're they're experiencing the reason why this this specific product is going to solve their problem. And for N, the problem is sustainable weight loss.

>> Yep. >> And I think that actually it explains a lot about why our honoring flow is the way it is, right? For like one, the majority, you know, for the majority of the population, this like weight loss, sustainable weight loss is not a new problem for them, right? It's been a lifelong battle. they've tried to lose weight before um either through DIY means or through another program. You know, they maybe had some success.

They've lost the weight, but then they gained it back like it wasn't sustainable or maybe they've just never lost the weight in the first place. So, um when they're kind of approaching a new program, right, they're they have a lot of doubts uh about that. They also come with a lot of like preconceptions around like they've tried stuff. If the feature looks like a, you know, a weight lo or a calorie tracker, right, and they've tried that before and it hasn't worked, it actually is like this immediate turnoff, right? They're like, "Never mind. This is just like x other program. This doesn't work. I'm not going to do this." Um, the last I guess like thing to note here is that, you know, this is not a problem that has uh a an easy solution. Now, some of that has shifted a little bit with uh weight loss medication, but um this is a problem that asks a lot of individuals, right? You even if you want to do like

even if you decide to sign up for N, like you still have to do a lot of work. This isn't like a I like to like compare it to like a video streaming service where >> you're going to go and you're going to sign up and you want to sign up quickly because you want to go watch the show that everyone's talking about and you're going to go sit on your couch and the value is just on your TV. Um this isn't like that. Like people need to put in work to get the results from the program still. And so with all that being said, um I think our onboarding flow is in many ways that aha moment for people, right? The the questions, the tone, the understanding makes them believe that this program is going to work for them and solve this problem that they've had for their entire life. So with that being said, I think the like how it looks is against conventional wisdom.

Um, but I actually think at its core, it's still doing what any successful onboarding flow should be doing. It just happens that the problem is a bit different than than maybe other problems. Yeah, I think that's really well said. I do think that the old school conventional wisdom on onboarding flows was that they should be as short as possible. And that wasn't wrong strictly speaking, but I think the more nuanced conventional wisdom is now.

Onboarding flow should be as short as possible to get the user to the aha moment. But for N, what I hear you saying is the aha moment is not, oh, I can use this product to lose weight. It's, oh, this product is going to tailor a program specifically to my unique needs in a way that will work where many other alternative solutions have failed in the past. And and the aha moment is very much intertwined with the onboarding experience because every question and every personalized response based off of the answers to those questions is building confidence in the user's mind that this is going to help them to solve this problem of losing weight that has been really difficult for them to solve in the past. And so I guess that brings me to another question which is what are

some of the most important questions that you're asking in the longboarding flow that have the most leverage on activation rates and subscriber conversion rates? And then how do you personalize the experience? Whether that's in terms of the duration of the program or the target amount of weight loss or even just how you're messaging the program to users based on how they're responding to some of these questions. >> There are a lot of questions in the flow as you know. So, I I I think it's going to be hard to pick out a single a single one. Um, I think the questions that are most unique to to N or the ones that tie the most into the program itself are the ones that I think are a bit uh kind of tied to like the foundations of our curriculum >> and that whole psychology based approach. N's curriculum is built off of CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy and it's a type of therapy that is is really

helping people kind of connect their thoughts to their feelings to like the behaviors that they then make. So some of the questions in our flow like may kind of start to reveal some of these thoughts and feelings that they maybe didn't notice before that starts to kind of like click and be like, "Oh, like that's why, you know, like that's why I have a hard time stopping eating, right? Like the the classic example is like the clean plate club that we I think a lot of people grew up with, right? Their parents or their grandparents always trying to make sure they finish their their food. um talking about how it's so wasteful if you don't finish your food, right? So now as an adult, you're uh you're sitting at the table, you're feeling full, but you start to think like I have to finish this otherwise I'm wasting food, right? And this leads to this thought of guilt and pressure and leads to this this um this behavior of

continue to eat even though you're full. So CBT and and even some of the questions in the onboarding flow like start to like get you to think about that and start to give you a label for that and when you have a label for it and when you can identify it then you can start to kind of challenge the behavior that comes out of those those thoughts and feelings and adjust things and say that no like I don't have to eat this like I can put it in the fridge I could eat it tomorrow I'm not wasting this. Um, and so I think the questions in the flow that probably are the most unique to us and feed most into the program are these ones that get you to start to like um tap into those those deeper uh thoughts and feelings that really have been what's been driving your behavior over the years. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I don't know if you've read 0ero to1 by Peter Teal. It's one of my favorite startup books and he

talks about how every successful startup is built on a secret of some kind or another. And so it sounds like part of N's secret is this idea that weight loss is physical, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the physical symptoms of being overweight or wanting to lose weight, there are these psychological underpinnings that drive human behavior. And so you have to start with unwinding some of those unhealthy thoughts or feelings that are driving unhealthy behaviors.

and view through that light. It makes sense that the onboarding flow would need to be relatively long and personalized because unlike say a calorie tracking app which you brought up earlier where you ask a handful of questions about what you eat and what your macros look like and then you just go to work tracking calories in this case you're trying to tap into the the user's underlying psychology which is a much more complex and nuanced set of questions. So I guess last question I'll ask related to the onboarding flow is do

you find that there are a specific set of user personas or user segments or archetypes? You can you can pick your label, but different types of users who behave in sort of consistent ways that the onboarding flow allows you to then better deliver value for those different types of users or is that sort of over complicating things and for the most part people are behaving similarly and trying to lose weight? >> We definitely adapt to different personas both in our product and and the onboarding flow. I think the way that we try to do that um you know we we've kind of we have some defaults that we we work around but in a lot of ways like we're trying to be reactive to what they're saying >> and so instead of having to like have three specific personas that we're we're locked in on um we can kind of just adapt to what they're saying and and what they need. I mean our core market is um women 30s 40s working juggling

family life. Like that's kind of our core archetype in general like uh weight loss has been less resonant with or at least weight loss programs resonate a little bit less with with males. So you know we we lean into kind of our core market and and the core problems that they experience and uh the day-to-day you know like challenges that they have in terms of time and juggling family. Um, but in a lot of ways, we're trying to always kind of adapt or or build, let's say, like if we have testimonials in the flow, right? We're trying to make sure that we have uh versions of that that can resonate with different different individuals and what they're saying. Got it. That makes sense. So, what I hear is you have a target ideal customer profile or ICP, which is women in their 30s or 40s, many of whom are juggling work life, family life, and so they're busy, they're stressed, they need a solution. N is there for them not

just to help them shed the weight physically but also to help sort of rewire how they're thinking psychologically about weight loss. Um but then within that target demographic you're less rigid around there's personas ABC D maybe there's some of that but you're trying to you're trying to personalize as much as possible the experience around every individual user of the product as opposed to forcing them into these boxes.

>> Yeah. Exactly. Because again like this is I think right people have tried to lose weight before like they want to feel like this is built for them right and if we just hardcode it too much into you're one of these three things at least the experience right it it I think takes away some of the like value of really connecting with their unique um struggles. We do actually we actually have like a behavior behavioral profile quiz like as part of the flow that kind of gives them some label to kind of um you know like map themselves to. Um but yeah, as far as the experience goes, you know, we're really trying to adapt to to kind of those those specific personal things because that's what helps them to believe that this is going to actually work for their, you know, unique personal uh situations.

>> Yeah, that makes sense. And we'll talk a little bit about AI later, but one of the themes I'm hearing consumer companies in particular talk about with AI is the potential it unlocks for hyperpersonalization, going beyond a set of static archetypes and towards, you know, individual user specific personalization of the product experience. And so, uh, would love to circle back on that later in the conversation. In the meantime, let's

shift gears and talk a little bit more about product growth at N more holistically. And so, you're currently the the VP of of growth at N. Um, talk me through what what does the product growth team look like at N? Um, what does your team look like? What does the day-to-day look like? And then we'll get into some of the specific product driven growth levers that you all are focused on. >> Right. We have both kind of this um this optimization focus as well as uh product expansion focus nowadays. And so a lot of the team is kind of um split a bit between those, right? Are we are we trying to uh what is the next program they're trying to launch? How do we bring that to market? what is the um purchase flow for that look like? Um what's the nurture flow for that look like? And then you know for the for the products that we have for the flows that we have right another portion of that team is kind of focusing on how do we

optimize um those experiences? How do we um you know improve both the purchase flow but then also the uh the like retention side of the equation, the counter offers. How do we you know identify issues and then address them? So, um, with that being said, like when it comes to day-to-day or on the on the optimization side, we're definitely using a lot of high velocity experimentation to just try to help us to learn uh as fast as possible. You know, like the the main goal event, you know, the end goal, right, is to try to uncover a performance win. Um, but experimentation, right, is I think a valuable tool to use alongside, you know, other qualitative needs to like just learn about your user base. Um, right. You can go run a survey. You can do usability testing. You can also like throw a couple screens or questions into your onboarding flow. Um, sometimes we found that like that's actually the best

way to get into like the mindset of someone at the right moment. Like you may actually get different results uh with that versus a survey, right? Because it's the targeting of the survey. Are you getting the right people? Are you getting them in the right mindset? Um so use a lot of experimentation to just learn about your user problems, what we can better serve and then um ideally right use that to kind of figure out what is the right thing to build to solve that problem and to get them to sign up.

>> Yeah, I think that's such an astute point that there are many ways of conducting user research. You can sit down and have a one-on-one user interview. You can run a market study through a survey. Um, but often times when you're intercepting somebody in the context of using the product, their responses are going to look a little bit different because they're in a different headsp space and often a headsp space that's more applicable to the information you need to make the right product decisions. So, let's talk a

little bit more about the AB testing infrastructure and process at N. What sort of tools do you all use for AB testing and what does your process look like and how many tests at this point is N running concurrently as a growth team? Yeah. So, a lot of our tooling is built um has been built in-house. Uh we um just from when we started doing testing and and um a bit about how we've been doing testing. So, the one I guess interesting tip I'll I'll offer is that like in a lot of like AB testing frameworks, what you're doing is you're putting a lot of branching. Um you know, if you're in this this test shows experience, right? So yes, if your code is well encapsulated, you have a lot of safety to launch a test, catch something, shut it off. Um, but if you don't build the test the right way, right, or there's a bug, it could actually expose people to something that you don't want. Um, and so >> what I think the team found over the

years is that like that just slowed down how fast we can throw tests out there because there was more concern about risk and more concern about the codebase and how many branching statements you have in there. And so uh we have a bit of like a unique system uh at least on our our purchase flows where we can just swap out Shaws of the entire system. Um, and so we can, you know, throw something out there if it's if it's not working, we just shut it off and like that code dies and it's never touched again. Um, so >> a bit of a unique in-house system there.

Uh we also have a in-out system for our our core product just kind of when we started uh running a lot of experiments but use I mean on the analytic side um use a lot of mix panel uh to just >> kind of do a lot of self um self-service analysis on the PM side. Oh, one thing I wanted to clarify. So you said that when you run a test, there's a set of code you're using to run an experimental variant and so that is sort of set up as a separate shard in your codebase, but then if it's unsuccessful, you can just turn off the test and that code goes away. I guess a related question is I've heard growth engineering managers in particular talk about how they have their teams approach code differently for core product experiments or core product improvements that they know are going to be part of the long-term codebase versus growth experiments where at least 50% of the time it's a losing variant and you're

going to end up moving on. And so do you all make different decisions as far as prioritizing speed versus quality of the codebase when you're running growth experiments? It depends on basically what you're doing and what's your confidence in baselining this thing, right? If if it's a strategic thing that you're planning to build on top of that you um that you want to make sure that you it's stable and and whatnot, right?

Like there you write slightly different code for that than if you are throwing something at the wall and you've no idea if it's going to work and you want to just learn. So instead of building the two weeks of, you know, the the twoe version, you build the two-day version and you get some signal. >> Um, and like you said, if it's if it's a um it's a loss, you throw it away. If it's uh successful, then you then you invest in >> u baselining that change to to 100% of the population. But um at that point, it makes sense, right? You've learned that it's valuable. So you're going to make that twoe investment now. So, uh, I think it's a bit of an art, right, of of trying to like figure out what tests are are on what side of that spectrum. Um, but it is, I think, an active decision that we make in in in the development process.

>> Yeah, that's pretty consistent with what I've heard from other growth teams, which is don't goldplate code for growth experiments until you've proven they are winners. And then once you've proven they're winners, then you can go back and goldplate the code and make sure it's there for the long run. Uh but the last thing you want to do is do the twoe version on code that could end up being throwaway code uh very quickly. What are some of to the extent you can share what are some of the most successful experiments that grow that N has run on the product growth team over the last few years and why do you think they were so successful? I'll maybe lead with the like why a bit. Um, a lot of the experiments that have worked well are the ones that I think are really tapping into motivation either finding ways to build motivation uh to like use someone's motivation uh to really lock themsel like lock them into um the right

path or to like reignite mo motivation. So, you know, some of the more interesting examples of that are for for n weight. Um, one of the other like pretty counterintuitive things that you'd see is that at the end of the flow in most cases, you're not getting a free trial by default. We're actually asking you to pay for your trial. >> We're giving we're giving individuals some some optionality there in terms of how much they pay. Um, but what we found is that like even getting people to just pay 50 cents, um, kind of shifts how they approach the trial. Like they they now have skin in the game.

>> Um, and so, >> uh, what we see is like it doesn't change conversion all that much. It's 50 cents. It's not a whole lot. >> Um, but that commitment level, that motivation changes. So now they enter the trial with a bit more like giving it a bit more of a fair fair chance. Um, and that's led to better like retention overall um, per like exposure. So like that's that's one example. >> Yeah. Well, I have a reaction to that and then I'd love to hear one or two more examples if you're willing to share. But I think that's fascinating and and it makes a lot of sense. It sort of in my mind loops back to what you were saying earlier in the discussion where you talked about how look, we're not an entertainment product. We are a product that will deliver value for users only in so far as they're willing to put in the work to unlock that value.

And I think there are plenty of examples of other products like gym memberships or educ educational products where it's not necessarily fun, but the user has a vested interest in putting in the work because they know they will get a positive outcome. And putting some money behind it as sort of an upfront commitment to pushing through that adversity often leads to better outcomes. And so I think that makes a lot of sense. I imagine the other advantage is even if it's only 50 cents, they have to put down a credit card or other payment method to pay that 50 cents. And so now it's much easier to get them over the hurdle of paying for the full subscription price when they're done with their trial.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean the because you mentioned it like one of the I think one of the most successful retention uh tactics ever used on me in the in like the health space was uh it's been it's been years ago before I had kids and was a bit more bound to the house but uh would do Orange Theory a lot and >> right you you have to like schedule your your classes and if you cancel within whatever I can't like 24 hours um they charge you like double the price of the I can't remember exact details But they basically would charge you money. Like I I had a I had a you know monthly subscription like with them. Like I could go unlimited times, but like if I if I said I was going to do something, they would hold me accountable. And obviously like >> the cynical way to view that is that they're just trying to like get more money. But uh from like an actual like behavior standpoint, like it really works. Like it it like you don't want to

you don't want to just be on the hook to pay. So like now you're now you're showing up at the gym. Now you're putting the work in. >> Yeah. Well, it's funny you bring up Orange Theory specifically. I've been doing HIT workouts there for the last couple years. And I I've ended up just scheduling my workouts the morning of, like 15 minutes before the workout when I know I'm actually going to be able to make it to avoid that last minute charge if I can't make it. But you're right, there is I I'm sure part of it is it's a revenue maximizing move for the business, which is great for them, but also it does tie into the positive psychology of >> okay, if I've put money behind this, then I need to follow through, which leads to the workout actually happening at a higher rate, which leads to better outcomes. There's another company from way back. This was over a decade ago, but I remember this company was called

Packed. And basically the idea was you put down a certain amount of money every week with a set of workouts again in the fitness space that you are planning to follow through on and then you have to upload your workout to validate that you actually did it. And if you don't, it goes into a pool that then gets paid out to the people who did complete their workout. And it was small amounts of money. But the idea was it's the same principle. It's the psychological commitment effect where once you've made the commitment, you're more likely to follow through which leads to better outcomes. Any other big winning

experiments worth highlighting over the last few years that sort of revealed an underlying truth about your user base and and how they tap into the motivation of weight loss? I >> I'll give you an example that's um a bit on the the you know midjourney or end of journey side of the equation. Um so right weight loss is again we talked about it's hard. it requires work. It's not uncommon for someone to to fall off uh the wagon a little bit, right? And so, you know, what we saw, right, is that yes, people fall off. Usually when they fall off, they come back to the app if they're not like remotivated like often times, right? They're going to cancel cuz they're like, you know, like I failed. This isn't working for me. I'm I you know, I'm done. Um, but what we built was like a bit of like a reon onboarding flow that I think one just tried to normalize this concept, right?

Like >> the majority, you know, I can't remember the exact number, but like a large portion of successful weight loss journeys have these hiccups, right? It's not uncommon. >> Just because you fell off the wagon for a week or two doesn't mean that you're a failure, right? And I think uh like normalizing that uh and then effectively getting people to kind of recommmit uh was a pretty massive uh improvement to to engagement and retention um for this this population that otherwise was going to kind of give up and and abandon. Um, so yeah, motivation, but just like this kind of constant another basically another example of motivation, but just a little bit later in the in the journey and and how do you kind of reignite that when it when it um lapses?

>> Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me a lot of Dolingo's streak freezes or now streak repair where you know you've got your daily streak, but if you fall off the wagon for a day or for a weekend or you go on vacation for a few days, they make it easy for you to jump back in and reinitiate your streak. And that proved to be not only a major needle mover in terms of free user retention, but also they eventually monetized streak freezes or streak repairs as ad hoc inapp purchases. And so it moved the needle for them on revenue as well. And that's a good transition into the last question I wanted to ask in this section which is just around monetization experiments. So we've talked a little bit about user growth and about user retention through some of these motivation tactics that you brought up. What about on the

subscriber conversion and average revenue per user side? Any major breakthrough wins there? >> Yeah, I mean we talked a little bit about like the you know the conversion side and the onboarding stuff. the the real like I think I mean this has been a challenge for N for a while is like on the the retention side of the equation. Our core product uh has been weight loss. When you've lost your weight, your willingness to kind of keep paying for a weight loss solution kind of goes away, right? Um so I like to compare it at times to to dating apps, right? Like when you've >> when they've done their job well, you found a partner, uh you should probably not be on a dating app anymore. Uh, and so, >> you know, because of that, like we've we've spent we've tried a number of times to find like these adjacent use cases. Um, and how can we lean into them? So, like you've you've had success losing weight. What can we help you with

now? Is it maintaining your weight? Um, is it potentially other areas of health? Um, so we've dabbled we we've dabbled a bit in there and I found, you know, successes, you know, small successes. Um, but really where we found more success is in can we offer you additional levels of support when you're in the middle of that weight loss journey. So, right, you um, you know, when you sign up for for Numee, you're getting this personalized um, psychology based curriculum. You're getting uh, that content. You're getting tracking tools and recipes and workout videos. Um, and uh, now like this this AI companion Wellie, that's helping you.

But if you're looking for more support, you can upgrade to our premium offering. Um, and that's going to get you that one-on-one human coaching. Um, which is going to be a bit more personal. Um, you're going to get personalized workout plans. You're going to get personalized meal plans. And so, I think that was one of the big ways that we've kind of uh, unlocked some of that um, that LTV growth. Um obviously over the past year plus uh with the advancements in the GP1 technology uh we've been able to add an additional level of support on top of that right in the form of clinical care uh and access to medication for those who are eligible. So now when you are uh in the program and you're you know starting to hit a plateau and you need more support like we have options um for you to to jump up into. Uh and then when you've reached success and you kind of want to ramp down, right, there's other

options for you uh to go down to. So I think that's been kind of where we've been able to see success and kind of get out of that um that that problem area where like success in the program means you leave the program. >> Yeah. You become a victim of your own success. And as you said, the dating category is such a good analogy. My very first guest on Subversive was Ravi Meta who was the chief product officer at Tender and he actually previously worked at Trip Adviser. I don't know if you overlap with Ravi.

>> He was uh my old boss. >> Okay, great. Rob's amazing. He's been such a mentor to me throughout my career. But yeah, I mean, as you said, in a world where you can become a victim of your own success if your product does its job and the user no longer needs it, that just puts even more emphasis on making sure you're delivering, but also capturing as much value from those users while they still are using your product.

And one of the most effective ways to do that is by offering multiple subscription tiers and or additional inapp purchases. Tender does that through their three subscription tiers plus gold and platinum. Plus, they've got boost and super likes. Sounds like you guys have an analogous set of offerings where you can move beyond the basic digitally delivered weight loss plan with human support and and other um both weight loss and weight maintenance programs which makes a lot of sense. So this brings us to the final component of our discussion today and that's around this recent proliferation of GLP1 medications and the impact that has had both on your core product offering and your strategies about converting and retaining subscribers. And so let's just

start with when did the executive team and the rest of the company at N recognize that GLP1s were going to change everything uh for N's business. >> We were pretty close to the space in general and I think even in the early days like had partnered with farm on a number of um studies and how can you know pair behavior change with uh with medication. So we've been closely monitoring and I think when things really like shifted uh was when WGO um was like FDA approved for for chronic weight management uh which I think was was in like 2021. So right you see that happening. I think a pretty reasonable assumption is uh that this is going to unack the market right dramatically. Um assuming that there's appropriate pricing and access uh to that medication. Uh, right. We've talked about how hard weight loss is. If there's something that makes it a bit easier, right, people are going to want it.

>> So, um, you know, I think the I think the like the interesting thing here is, you know, when you talk about like product market uh fit collapse um like some of the some of the other examples that you probably think more recently like Stack Overflow, let's take an example, right? people are asking, you know, they're going to Google and asking these questions or they're going directly to Stack Overflow and they're asking these questions and Stack Overflow is giving them the answers.

Now, they've shifted to chat GPT or claude or something else, right? That is they're not really changing their behavior as much like they're still asking questions, but they're they're just getting better results at effectively the same cost, >> which is faster as well. >> Much faster, right? Like Yeah, exactly. Better results, faster results, but same cost, right? um weight loss medication I think is like a little bit different right because it's not it doesn't one doesn't completely replace behavior change um both as a um as something to pair with but then in the market in general and it also like costs significantly more >> so it hasn't like I don't think it's completely eliminated the the market for diets and behavior change um but it's definitely shrunk a lot I think what like has happened and what we had to adapt to uh was was more of like a product channel fit collapse because what happened is you have all these

pharmaceutical companies now you have all these competitor companies that are offering weightless medications they're starting to flood the same paid channels and they're targeting the same audience they're targeting the same problem um they just have a solution that is uh delivering just by by nature of them of it like higher LTVs and so uh they're flooding the same channels. They're driving up um CSS because they have the LTVs to cover those CACs. That makes it challenging for us to continue growing, you know, our new weight product that has a a naturally lower LTV. And so that's I I think it's a it's obviously has shrunk the like the market, but I think the channel um has been like the biggest force function of of us shifting our um our strategy a bit.

>> Yeah, that makes sense. So, what I heard you say was obviously medication can can make weight loss easier, but there's still the psychological component of weight loss and keeping the weight off. Plus, there's the cost component of these medications aren't cheap. And so, that has impacted how you're positioning your product. It's also impacted your acquisition channels. Has it impacted your pricing at all? Like, has it put downward pressure on the amount you're able to charge for any given part of your offering? for I mean for our existing offerings um I think we definitely have seen in the market um probably the combination of both weight loss medication and AI you know producing some solutions that are that are lower priced uh we haven't yet played too much with our with the pricing of our um more um legacy products like our new weight and and premium products. Um, but we definitely

see it a bit in the market. Um, and I do think it like it it factors a bit into some of the other like strategic things that we've been doing lately to adapt to um adapt to this new shift. >> Yeah. So, let's talk a little bit more about that. And you said something earlier in the episode that I loved, which is this distinction between growth optimization work versus product market fit expansion work. And that really resonates with me because I spent seven years leading product and growth teams across three companies. I bought a Quizlet and fair and I bought a I was primarily a core product PM uh and then a leader of the core product team. Then I went to Quizlet and led the growth product team but most of that work was around growth optimization and then at fair it was much more around category expansion and international expansion and at market retailer expansion which were really product market fit expansion

bets. It sounds like given the shift that GLP1s has caused in the market, you and your team have needed to shift more of your resources from just optimizing the existing product, the existing channels, the existing onboarding and conversion funnels to bringing new bets to market, which I would I would define as product market fit expansion bets. What have some of those PMF expansion bets been and how have you fared so far?

>> Right. We talk about like LTV, right? And basically LT CAC is like a was starting to like become a limiting factor in our growth. And so um I think we've our expansion bets have like have tried to drive both the LTB side and the CAC side of it on the LTB side. the obvious um product expansion there, right, is actually starting to like move with the market um and the technology shift and starting to kind of offer um that clinical care and access to GLP1s that that everyone's looking for that we know is effective uh for those who are clinically eligible. So that was the big, you know, the big shift on the LTV side. um over the last maybe a year right we've launched four to six different um programs um in the clinical space uh with access to different GLP-1 u medications oral medication um so uh you know that has helped us naturally start to like play again in these in the these paid channels with products that

have naturally higher LTVs um so it it's It's been interesting on that on that side, right? going from a purely digital uh product offering into one that has a lot more um operational complexity, you know, with clinical side of the house as well as right now we are actually in some cases shipping, you know, in many cases shipping medication and working with pharmacies and um it's uh it's definitely been a shift on on that side. on the on the CAC side of the equation, you know, we've always been trying to like combat CCS with referrals, word of mouth, like trying to find lower cost channels, but maybe to your point um earlier about people looking for like lower cost options.

Like one of our biggest pivots here has been um how can N provide value uh on someone's health journey even if they're not willing to pay anything, >> right? they're they're um you know interested in their health. They want to get help, but they just they either don't have the money or they don't fully know what to buy before you know they they would put anything down. So, actually just last I think last week uh was when it became a bit more like public. But we've like launched a free tier of our app uh that's designed to kind of help people start to build uh these like micro habits that can lead to improvements in their health. um leaning a bit more into kind of like the gamification reward side of of the equation where you know small daily actions like hitting your SEP goal or eating a healthy snack can uh can get you rewards and the form of gift cards or donations and stuff like that. So I

think yeah our our approach in in terms of progression has has been a bit twofold on both sides of the equation um trying to find um you know way to unlock and and especially on that on that low cack side right like now if we're getting people into our ecosystem if we're helping them and they're reaching a point where they have a bit more of a need um for whatever reason like we are now starting to expand our products in a way that uh we'll have more products um to hopefully cover what they could possibly want want in terms of support.

Uh whether it's um you know a weight loss offering with medication or without medication um eventually other areas of health that we'll we'll probably uh expand to. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Somebody once used the analogy of minnows versus dolphins versus whales to describe the spectrum of user needs and user willingness to pay. And I think oftent times when a tech company is just getting started, they focus on those dolphins who are the down the fairway valuable users, but then as the company matures, you can both go up market and target your whales. And so that would be offering things like access to medication or access to human care providers who are going to or coaches who are going to help you direct more directly and effectively lose the weight. Or you can also go down market and focus on users who have lower initial intent or less willingness to pay or less ability to pay. Uh in this

case with a free app that just provides some very basic habit tracking. Um and in your case I guess the analogy that comes to mind for me uh I'm sure you're probably familiar with this app Sweatcoin. It sounds like they you you offer something very similar to what they've been offering for a while, which is uh it's a free app, but if you complete a step goal or a certain set of milestones every day or every week, you get access to points or credits that you can then redeem for gift cards or other rewards. And then on the high end of the market, I had Corey Sher Shearer on the podcast from Headspace uh several months ago, and she talked about Headspace's journey after the merger with uh Ginger.io IO where they move from a pure play meditation app into more human uh delivered therapy and and psychiatry solutions. Um so both of those represent vectors to both accelerate user growth and improve LTV per customer and it

sounds like you've had a lot of success there. Um obviously as you expand all of

these >> uh more diverse sets of customers and needs the need for personalization goes up. We talked about that a little bit earlier. um how is N using AI to inject more personalization into the product experience and beyond personalization are there any other ways that the company has been using AI to improve the product experience? Yeah. I mean, so as far as personalization goes, um, the probably the biggest thing to call out or the most noticeable thing is is this AI companion well that that we've built into the experience. Uh, where, you know, before, right, it might take you a while to get a response from a coach.

Um, now you kind of have this at your fingertips uh assistant who can, you know, understands what you're doing in the app, understands uh what you've been logging, um how your weight journey's been going, and can, you know, help you in the moment. Let's say you're about to cook a meal or you're about to go shopping and you don't know what um you know, you want to have something but you want a healthy version of it, like help me create this, right? So this kind of at your fingertips personal assistant that is is aware of your health journey um has been a really powerful uh unlock um I think that's going to become you know more powerful as we start to collect more signals whether it's additional um uh like Apple health data or eventually you know starting to integrate more like biomarker um information right like what can we do with at how can we connect people with the right products um the right

solutions. So I think that's a pretty pretty exciting um space for us in in the health health side. Obviously with having the clinicians there to kind of like confirm and double check and redirect but kind of being able to have that immediate access to recommendations I think is valuable. Um, we've also like outside of outside of that, I think one of the like more interesting things that we've been able to do with AI is unlock this like long uh long had like hope of like being able to pull your phone out and take a photo of your meal and have it log your meal for you and and deliver your calories and your macros.

>> Oh, that's amazing. >> Um, like that that's something that I think had been like an idea for years and years, right? And now finally with uh with AI that's actually possible like we can um cut out all of that friction like that like that negative friction of having to open your app and type out everything and go through autocomplete and say how many um you know how many potatoes did I have like it granted you know like the accuracy isn't perfect but in many cases uh with a weight loss journey it's it's about um like doing generally the right thing right and generally getting aense of like is this healthy, is it not, what should I swap out? So, um I think that's been a pretty big unlock and it's actually powering uh one of the features in our free experience where um it's not the full meal logging and calorie tracking and insights, but it's helping you at least identify what are like the healthy green

foods that I'm eating. Um so, we've been able to bring that uh not only to our paid users, but even to to our free offering of it. >> Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's one of the better applications of AI in a consumer app that I've heard of in a long time. And as somebody who's a quantified self junkie, I've got, you know, I've got my Aura Ring for sleep. I've got my Apple Watch for exercise. And I've tried a number of calorie trackers, but the amount of manual effort required with the legacy trackers to get the data into the system was just so prohibitively high. And so, if you can just snap a photo and have a good enough answer on what your calories and what your macros look like, that's that's super powerful. Well, let's get

into our lightning round. So, I'm going just ask you a handful of rapid fire questions. Uh, feel free to just give me brief responses and then we'll wrap things up here. Um, let's start with the one I always ask, which is, what is the best part about working at N? And what's one thing you would change? >> I mean, the the best part is getting to work at a company where your mission is so impactful. Like, it's it's great to see daily proof that what we're doing is positively impacting people's life at scale. far as like one thing I would change. I mean I think this is this is more been a change that has been uh interesting to adapt to which is I think I mentioned earlier like that shift into digital products to physical goods.

>> It definitely takes a bit away from that like super high fast crazy experimentation right cuz >> there's a there's a bit more downstream implications these days um a bit more coordination. Um I don't think I I would I would uh I don't think I could change it. Um uh but it's definitely created some challenges. >> Yeah. Yeah. When you're dealing with humans and supply chains and medications, the whole Facebook move fast and break things isn't always the right answer. Um but I'm I'm with you. I mean, especially when you're trying to positively impact people's lives, you want to move with urgency and and deliver value as fast as possible. And sometimes there just have to be more guard rails in place. Um, we already talked about this a little bit, but what is the what we talked about some of the most successful AB test results you've seen. What about the most surprising AB test result you've experienced at N

since being there? >> I I'll give you I'll give you like uh one of the things that just hasn't worked um in a surprising way. Like I think the uh a lot of like the checkout best practices um while we've tried them and in many cases baseline them, they just haven't been fruitful for us. And >> it's it's been a bit surprising. I think if I have to like guess why, it's probably because of that long boarding flow and you built up so much motivation that like >> the friction at checkout isn't as impactful as it is in an e-commerce site where you're, you know, you're seeing the product and you're buying it. Um, but it has definitely been a bit surprising where like we've we've definitely solved problems there. It just like hasn't moved the needle.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's such a good lesson and that these best practices exist for a reason. And often times, especially on transactional screens like a paywell or a checkout screen, they're pretty transferable across companies and products, but not always. And often times that's rooted in some key difference in the user psychology. Um, in this case, the longboarding flow, like you've already put the user through a lot of friction and built up their motivation, and so at that point, maybe they just want to buy. Um, what's a non-obvious metric that you care a lot about in your product growth work?

>> This this might be obvious. I think it's a good reminder nonetheless, but I I think one of the things that I care a lot about when when thinking about um acquisition and driving acquisition growth are are often the metrics that are furthest away from acquisition, >> right? If you can't retain your users long term, if you can't find ways to get them into different offerings or your LTV is going to suffer. And if your LTV suffers, that's going to severely hamper your ability to actually spend responsibly, right? You can always spend more. Um, but if you want to spend in a way that's actually getting you return on your investment, um, that return is a limiting factor and it's just so critical in being able to grow products, um, despite it being so far away from the actual like, uh, you know, point of of growth and acquisition. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that because with our client business, we work with a number

of companies that seem to kind of silo on boarding versus paywall conversion or subscriber conversion in their minds or even in how they structure their teams. But realistically, those two things are directly connected, right? And the more efficient your onboarding flow is at building motivation and getting users excited about a potential purchase, then obviously the more better the payw wall is going to perform and and the more better you're the better you're going to be able to convert those subscribers.

And so the the whole thing needs to work together as a system. And often times I think some of these top offunnel acquisition um flows get overlooked as a very important driver of downstream monetization >> even deeper than just like sign up, right? Just like once they've purchased like do they retain on that subscription, >> right? if if they if they purchase then bail because the product's not good enough or there's major gaps, right?

Like that's that's also going to trickle back into what you can drive on the growth side. >> All right, two more here. What is one consumer product other than N whose growth strategy you really admire? >> So, I mean, we we always try to keep an eye on competitors and what they're doing and and learning. I think one of the more recent ones um interesting ones that uh my wife actually shared with me is um it's it's also in like the the healthcare self-care space uh Finch.

It's like it's like if uh Tamagotchi from like our you know 90s early 2000s was like directly tied to your personal um self-care habits. I mean I think like that idea itself is like a pretty unique thing in terms of like you know people can kind of I mean people get like dig into games and like stop taking care of themselves and this is connecting them an interesting way but they've they've really taken like the gamification and social networking uh to an extreme there uh that I think is pretty interesting.

Yeah, that's a very cool product and one we use as a comparison point with clients all the time. Both because they've been so successful on the performance marketing side of things in terms of acquiring users very costefficiently, but also with the gamification motivation tactics they've used to keep and retain subscribers over time. Um, last one. What's a book, podcast, or thinker that's really influenced your approach as a product growth leader?

>> I mean, I'll probably go back to my the start of my career. uh at Revisor uh the CEO Steve Coffer had this this mantra speed wins and it was like a sign on his door there. >> Um and I think you know you need to be careful about misunderstanding or misapplying that quote in a way that like leads you to like super shortsighted micro optimizations and like failure to take big swings. Um but the the main takeaway for me like is like if you're not doing something you're not learning. And so whenever you know myself or or my team gets stuck on a decision always trying to like force us to just pick something right do something it's better than sitting and dwelling you know if as long as you do something and you are measuring it and you can um you know learn from that uh that's going to help you drive uh improvements to your to your offering.

Um help you you know get the answer that maybe like you might have been like debating a bunch, right? like you're not going to answer the these questions just in your head. So, um, speed wins and just and always trying to kind of learn. >> Yeah, I love that quote, Speed Wins. And since you're from Chicago, I'll I'll throw this out there. I don't know if you've seen the the show The Bear. Uh, but it's based in Chicago. It sounds like you have seen the show. I have. And And it centers around this group of chefs that's trying to get their restaurant off the ground. And they keep coming back to this sign on the wall that says, "Every second counts." And there's the narrow view of that, which is every second counts. So, we just have to be going as fast as we can for as long as we can every single day, you know, day in day out, week in week out.

But then as you go through the show, it becomes a little bit more nuanced and you realize there's another way of looking at it, which is every second counts because life is short. And so, make sure that you're finding those special moments in life to delight people as somebody who creates food. And I think that that analogy applies here. Speed wins, but also make sure you're working on the right things with the precious time you have as product.

Exactly. >> Uh well, this has been a real pleasure. Thank you for coming on the podcast, Brent. Uh any closing words for the audience before we wrap up? >> No. Uh thanks for having me. Um obviously go check out N. Uh feel free to shoot me any uh thoughts um to to my LinkedIn or or whatever. Uh but uh yeah, thanks for having me. This is a real pleasure. >> Absolutely. Thanks for drawing.