Transcript
Speaker: You'll see people people posting screenshots of their Whoop app or their Or app, you know people saying, for the first time, I hit 100% steep score. I had my first night of seven green recoveries ever, having just gotten my Orion. So anecdotally, people are seeing, you know, massive, massive impacts like that. And then we'll have clinically validated data soon.
Speaker: This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Speaker: Harry, welcome to the Home Healthspan podcast. Thanks for having me. I am looking forward to this conversation because I do think of our five pillars. Sleep is the one that most people have the most interest in.
Speaker: And so getting into the science and the the potential and everything there, I'm excited to dive into. But before we do, how would you describe yourself? I would say I'm a lively founder and sleep nerd.
Speaker: Okay. Yeah. i We're very similar to that. I'm also a founder and a sleep nerd. So I think this will be a fun conversation. What got you into being a sleep nerd?
Speaker: Well, so my last company, founded it when I was 20 and we ended up getting to amazing scale. We got to to nine figures in revenue, tens millions users, um big team.
Speaker: And i was working incredibly hard. I was working pretty much seven days a week and i would... roll out of bed, open my laptop, I work pretty much from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed.
Speaker: And i do that seven days a week, day in, day out. And I wouldn't take holiday, was significantly neglecting my health. And i started to get health problems. and sort of feel quite burnt out. So I got this, this vertigo, which I spent two years going to all these doctors trying to figure out.
Speaker: Um, and, you know, it's unusual for someone my age, who was 21 at the time. um and, uh, had this like amazingly successful company, but, um, you know, health wise, I felt like, uh, uh, you know, i felt, felt, felt like an elderly person with kind of, um, you know, how, how was feeling. And so I realized as as a,
Speaker: As a founder, I got to start thinking of myself like an athlete. And athletes do a lot of work off the court so that they can perform when they're on the court.
Speaker: Whereas as founders, we typically just think about, you know, what's on the court. And and and we tend to neglect what's what's off the court and and doing the work off the court. And so for me, that first step was, okay, I want to start tracking my sleep.
Speaker: And so I tried, i tried the the think the first product I tried was a Whoop. And and and i realized just how badly was sleeping. And i was really surprised, um you know, just how how badly i was sleeping. But i but ah also there was a sense of frustration because um ah felt like the only, know, was giving me, it was showing me I had this problem, but ah it wasn't doing this solve the problem.
Speaker: it was, you know, kind of telling me to essentially be in bed longer. I think you'd appreciate this. A friend of mine who's also a a founder and sleep nerd, he did describe wearables. He's like, wearables are like board meetings. They tell you all the things you already know, but they don't tell you how to actually fix them in in real life. Totally, totally. So, you know, that's kind of, and that's what led me to, you know, down this path of, okay, how can I build something that um not only gives me the data, but also actually does something to solve the problem and improve my sleep.
Speaker: So that's kind of how I i got down this path. um But, you know, really started from just having my own, you know, having sort of external success, but, um ah you know, struggling health wise as a result of neglecting my, you know, my body and my health. And, you know, always encourage founders to um to kind of do the work before, you know, before your body starts giving you the signs.
Speaker: Yeah. i mean, there's there's a lot in there, you know, I personally relate to. So it's funny, both my parents were physicians, right? So you'd think as physicians, you know, the importance of this and the other, but my parents, you know, they had gone through residency before there were legal limitations on how hard you could work and how many hours.
Speaker: And so my dad taught me growing up, he's like, oh no, like you can just train your body not to need sleep. Like sleep's not that important. and you You can just train not to need it. And so I believe that. And so when I was building my first company, I'd sleep four hours a night, whatever it was, like just get up, stay up late, get up early, just crank, crank, crank.
Speaker: And then funny, our VC would do a book club and one of the books one time was Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep. I'm like, whoa, that was wrong. right like We actually do need this. This a really important thing. And so that was kind of my aha moment to to get into it and to start tracking it. And then to your point, there's one thing to see the data and there's another to then know what to do about it.
Speaker: And, you know, AGZ, right? Like there are all these supplements you can do. There's my neuropod here. There there are different vagal nerve stimulators or resonance breathing or my Sensate and Apollo Neuro that helps you stay asleep. Like there are all these different tools.
Speaker: What was it that made you decide to go into the entry point that you did and said, okay, look, there are a billion things that we could do that could help sleep. This is the one we should do.
Speaker: Yeah, totally. Well, first of all, on on what you said, you know, heavily relate to that. and i think something we say is bad sleep is the new smoking. So it used to be, you know, it's just a smoke. It used to be cool. It used to be the status symbol to to sleep as little as you possibly can.
Speaker: And, you know, it was it was an impressive thing coming to the office and and kind of, you know, saying how little you slept. We now know just how, not only just how bad,
Speaker: sleep deprivation is for your health, the fact that it's, you know, worse for your for your body than smoking, but also actually the cognitive, uh, deficiencies, you know, as a result of. You literally are dumber. You're actually, exactly. you you're functionally drunk.
Speaker: Um, if you're, if you're sleep deprived. So, And less less able to recognize it. So not only are you drunk, but you think you're sober and totally fine and behind the wheel. Yeah, it's the worst of all worlds.
Speaker: Exactly. So as ah as a founder, that's certainly not a good thing. And then also, um you know, for your employees, you don't want your employees coming to the office on three, four hours sleep, making decisions, you know, functionally drunk.
Speaker: um So ah so we said bad sleep is a new smoking. And then how we kind of ended up here, why we ended up here. um So I met Dr. Michael Bruce, who's ah one of not the top sleep doctor in the world.
Speaker: And he kept on reiterating to me that body temperature was the number one controllable component of sleep quality. And so if we can understand the changes that your body makes throughout the night,
Speaker: and keep your body at the perfect temperature, then we hopefully can significantly improve your sleep, boost deep sleep, boost REM, reduce wake-ups, and and essentially hack your sleep.
Speaker: And so I think, ah you know, with your own, you think about why that's the case. Think about how the the human body was designed. um You think about our ancestors who would sleep in nature.
Speaker: know, if you're sleepy in nature, you think about that the sun goes down, the temperature drops, your body temperature drops between one and a half and two degrees.
Speaker: And then it gradually gets colder as you get to the middle of the night and it and your body temperature stays there. And then towards the morning, the sun starts to come up and and you're ah your body temperature rises about one and a half to two degrees and you're thermally awoken.
Speaker: And so that's what the human body is designed to do. and And the reality of modern life is we're totally out of touch with that. And so you look at, so we do these sleep tests and we can see, you know, human body temperature and you look at human body temperature in modern day on a graph and it doesn't look like that nice, smooth kind of downwards and upwards curve throughout the night.
Speaker: It's all over the place. you know, spiking and, and, and troughing and, um, you know, with partners and thick duvets and mattresses and air conditioning and heating and hot environments, cold environments, windows.
Speaker: What about when our timing of eating? Like I would imagine meal timing could play into that too. Totally, totally. um and And obviously light exposure, you know blue light exposure, et cetera.
Speaker: And so what what our product does is we're a smart cover that goes over the mattress. It's got embedded sensors that track your sleep.
Speaker: It's dual zone. And then we adjust your with your body your body temperature to keep you at the perfect body temperature. um and And partners can sleep at different temperatures. There are two sensors, two thermal zones.
Speaker: And we give you an upfront sleep test. So we're able to create a unique thermal profile for you. looking at what your body is doing, and then pre-program your Orion based on your unique thermal profile. So when you a device, it's kind of preset with your perfect night's sleep.
Speaker: And restoring body temperature, you know, changing sleep environment, I think, ah ah you know, could can have massive effects on people's sleep. But then also, um and and you asked why this form factor, think what's so important interesting site for us is it, you know, temperature not only has a massive effect on sleep, but also this form factor where we go over your mattress and under your sheets, it's totally passive.
Speaker: So you don't have to do anything whatsoever. You set it up once, it takes 15 minutes, you put it in your bed and it completely autonomously, ah you know, helps helps you sleep without you having to, um you know, really do any work at all.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. That, that makes sense. How personalized is it? Um, or individualized is it? Cause you know, I have an eight sleep and I also have a chili pie, right? Like it have Bermuda and Atlanta. And I've seen for the eight sleep, cause it's a full bed and's two different sides, wildly different temperatures.
Speaker: Um, the, the preference and some may be, psychosomatic, but I imagine there's some to biology of maybe women sleep a little hotter, like want something warmer than maybe men do or body fat could play into it. I don't know. What do you see in those personal differences?
Speaker: Everybody is radically different. um Women and men are typically quite different. The sort of typical would be the man sleeps colder.
Speaker: um the Also, the the man sleeps warmer and wants to sleep colder, and the um the wife sleeps ah colder and wants to sleep warmer. There's a huge amount of difference. So that's why we do the upfront sleep test.
Speaker: And so giving you the sleep test, we can track your temperature over the course of the night. And that's one of the things that that these products typically lack is they don't actually know your body temperature.
Speaker: And so if we can take your body temperature over the course of the night, we can see ah what your temperature profile is, your hot sleeper, cold sleeper, et cetera. We can see how that temperature arcs throughout the night. And then we can estimate what it would take in terms of Orion adjustment to um to restore your body to that kind of circadian rhythm, you know your your your natural um temperature cycle.
Speaker: So the answer is there's huge amount of variance person to person. um And you know in in my opinion, that the the best way to do it is from an upfront sleep test where we can actually create an environment based on your unique thermal profile.
Speaker: Now, a question on that initial unique profile is oftentimes there's more variance within groups than across groups, right? So if you took the average of men and the average of women, they're more similar than Each man, right? Like you'll get more variability across men. And I wonder how or if that applies to the person too, right? So I did an intake. Here was that night what it looked like.
Speaker: But tonight i had a work dinner, eight. I normally did six. It didn't start till eight. Maybe had a couple drinks. You have a way to measure temperature. Can you see, ooh, you're spiking your temperature significantly.
Speaker: earlier or later than normal at higher degree, like we need to real time adjust differently. Is that something Orion's able to do? So yeah, your, your body, your body changes quite significantly over time.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, you know what you do that day does affect, uh, your sleep that night significantly. Um, but also, over time, ah your your your body is constantly changing.
Speaker: And so what the the way it works, the sleep test kickstarts the model. So you know when when it arrives on on night one, it's um you know it's it's ready for you and personalized. And then through our sensors, we track your heart rate, breath rate, sleep patterns. We learn your body over time and make adjustments to your sleep ah you know based on those learnings.
Speaker: Okay. Yeah. Cause that, that was one thing I've noticed in the products I use, like for some reason on the eight sleep, I like to keep it way, way colder, right? I keep going down, down, down, and I still can wake up at one, one 30 and I'm sweating. Right. So it's really dialing in. Whereas the, the chili pad, I have what I would have thought was pretty warm and I'll wake up freezing. Like I started sleeping in socks and so I was like, I can not get this where it's warm enough.
Speaker: What is it? Because they do it totally differently. So like the the chili pad, you put a Fahrenheit degree temperature in, like I want it at 78.
Speaker: And the eight sleep is totally opaque. It's a plus or minus one or two. And it's not degrees, right? It's just this like black box of some number. where I don't know what it means. So I don't know how they translate to each other.
Speaker: I guess, how does Orion work? And then what are the typical temperature ranges? Because I actually have no clue. And I'd be, you're you're the expert here. Yeah. ah So we actually you offer both. So um you can have plus or minus. So goes from minus 10 to plus 10.
Speaker: um Or you can have Fahrenheit or Celsius, you know, for those of us from from across the pond. Or the the entire rest of the world. the You can be fair. Exactly. um But ah so so we we go from and the temperature range is 50 degrees Fahrenheit to 115 Fahrenheit well.
Speaker: And so um the answer is it's way too cold to way too hot. You wouldn't sleep 50 the whole night and you wouldn't want to sleep at 115 either. But ah I think we have we're the widest temperature range of any of these products, um, get colder, get warmer.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, and then you, you can set, you know, four stages throughout the night. So, um, I like to, uh, I, I like to kind of, so and, and, you a lot, there's a lot of science behind this, um, starting, ah starting cold, getting,
Speaker: quite a bit colder, about an hour after you go to sleep. And then about kind of three to five hours, um, getting a little bit less cold and then, pre-wake up sort of that hour pre-wake up, um, starting to get warmer and and warm the body up.
Speaker: That's kind of how I like to sleep. Yeah. It's really cool. Cause we, you know, we learn your body over time could kind of make changes based off, um those learnings and and recommendations. um and and then And then you can see all your sleep insights the next day. So you can yeah really see the impact it has.
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Speaker: Just to satisfy my own curiosity, your average temperature ranges, if you know them, I imagine you do it in centigrade, but in Fahrenheit, do you do have a sense of like, hey, I start off colder, it's this temperature, then I get down to this and I go like what your four numbers are?
Speaker: Yeah, so I actually like i like to use the the the ah the minus one, minus two, the the sort minuses and pluses rather than temperature range. um what i my My rough estimation, but so i do i do minus I start at minus six, I then do um minus four, and then minus two, and then plus one.
Speaker: Um, and, and my, my sort of estimation on what that is, um is it's about, uh, 65 and then, ah and then kind of and then, rats and then and then it's so big big swings wow okay and And on that, I misunderstood. So I thought one was cold and then two, you got colder, but you actually bump it up warmer a couple degrees from one to two.
Speaker: So minus 10 is the coldest, plus 10 is the warmest. Yeah, but you were saying like you started 65 and go to 70. I'm talking about like your phase one, two, three, four of your four settings.
Speaker: I was, i had thought you were saying... you start off cold. So you start off at a, and then you got colder at two, a little warmer at three and then much warmer at four. But you're saying the coldest is one and we kind of step it up through the night. I guess it depends. Cause I typically get in, I typically get in bed about an hour after i meant to get in bed. That's probably recently. um So I like to, I like to lag it a little bit, but ah typically, typically, and also, you know, I kind of,
Speaker: like to cool, cool down once I, once I get in bed. Um, and so I, I, uh, kind of change it up night to night a little bit, depending on um, you know, on, on, on what time I'm getting bed, but that typically that's kind of what I do.
Speaker: Okay. I got a text today from a friend who was asking me advice on TRT. Now, I'll tie this all together in a second. But his concern is an older guy is retired, and he was really worried about going on TRT because he didn't want to shut off his endogenous testosterone production.
Speaker: And so was like, well, look at HCG and things you can do there. But the the corollary I'm coming to here is I've had friends who have one of these kinds of devices and they get rid of it.
Speaker: And the reason is, yes, there's zero question. My sleep was infinitely better. but I was unable to sleep without it.
Speaker: When I would travel, I just couldn't sleep because I'm so used to it being so perfect. And is there any evidence our body adapts to it where we really can't? Or is it just psychological of, I know what it's like to be really good. And so it's hard to to go back. I had a Somebody who spoke early in law school and they're like, look, if you think you're going to go into public service, don't put on the expensive suit. Like don't taste the expensive wine because it is better.
Speaker: And like, it's very hard to go backwards once you know the better thing. And so I'm just curious what you've seen on that. 100%. We hear that every day. um We say, use it. we've We've heard this. This this is from ah from a customer. Now I say this, but um using, sleeping on Orion at home makes sleeping in a five-star hotel a miserable experience.
Speaker: Because you don't have your Orion and, um, you know for the first time and you sleep terribly and then you realize, wow, that was actually my baseline before I had the Orion. Um, so, it, it definitely ruins you uh, you know, for, for, for, for the times that you don't have your Orion. Now I think we're, we're, we're doing some hotel partnerships. So i would assume like Amman, Four Seasons, like they they need to start getting on this bandwagon.
Speaker: Exactly. A lot of, lot of hotels been, uh, you know, kind of, um, uh, contacting us to try and try and put us in their, uh, in their, in their rooms and kind of make these around sleep suites. Um, and, uh, and so that's, that's something with where we're working on right now. Um, but there's no question it improves your sleep so much that you can't sleep anywhere else without it, but it's more that,
Speaker: when you're having that, you know, really bad experience, you're in that hotel or wherever you are, um, that's how you used to sleep, you know, before you got the Orion. And, uh, and so, you know, would you rather kind of just have that or as you're based on every night or would you rather, you know, when you can optimize your sleep, have your sleep optimized? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it I'm curious, have you done partnerships with Whoop, with Aura, with even your own customers with Apple Health to try to track, hey, let's look at the two weeks before or the month before you got an Orion.
Speaker: And let's look at your REM, your Deep, your TotalSleep, all that. And then let's check the month after. And let's check two months after that to see the impacts people get when they get one of these devices.
Speaker: Yeah, so we're we're in the middle of our first sleep study, so we'll have kind of clinically validated answers very soon. um From an anecdotal perspective, if you look through our Reddit, our subreddit, um you'll see people people posting, ah screenshots of their Whoop app or their Or app, you know, people saying for the first time, I've worn a Whoop for five years, for the first time, i hit 100% sleep score first night on the Orion.
Speaker: People saying, you know, here's my recovery for the last, you know, three three months. um I had my first night of seven green recoveries ever, you know, having, having just, uh, just got my Orion. So, um, anecdotally people are seeing, you know, massive, massive impacts like that. And then we'll have clinically validated data soon.
Speaker: Yeah. And a lot of times the anecdote's more powerful than the data, right? Like these are real individual stories. And, you know, i think a lot of people, myself included, right. I didn't, I knew I wanted something like this and it wasn't until I sold my last company that I treated myself to one. i was like, okay. And then of course I bought two.
Speaker: psychologically, like you look at a supplement, you say, okay, it this costs X this costs Y, or I can do this. And the the price tags for these can look high. I guess my argument, so I remember my my ex-wife, the reason she's next, like we slept in separate rooms and she was sleeping on a really terrible mattress.
Speaker: And it took me forever to convince her to go buy a really good bed. And then we finally, we go to the store, we buy an expensive bag, we get it. And i I wrote her and I was like, Hey, I know you're stressed about this, but if you do the math, you're spending like $10 a night, just in one year. If you threw this thing away after a year, $10, like how much would you pay for a good night's sleep?
Speaker: And she wrote back said, thank you so much for sending. I was about to call and cancel the order, but like this really framed it for me. And I do challenge anyone listening to this who thinks, oh, that's not ah that's too much to spend, to go look at the impact it has on sleep and the impact sleep has on every other aspect of your life, how you show up in your relationships, how you show up at work, how you show up to yourself and say,
Speaker: Let me just amortize this over a year, much less three, much less five, much less 10. And how much am I spending per night? And how much would I spend? How much do I spend for a single night in a hotel that I say, oh, this hotel is better than this, right?
Speaker: Just how how do you position that conversation with people who might look at the price tags on these? Because for me, it was a bit eye-opening. Totally. I think how how I position the conversation is, look, they they are ah they are expensive, there' no question.
Speaker: But the downside is we have a 30 day risk free guarantee. So you have a 30 day window to return it for a full refund and we cover shipping. The upside is we have customers crying over the phone to us about how, you know, for the first time, ah couple has managed to get back in bed together.
Speaker: Or for the first time in decades, have slept through the night without getting up to go to the bathroom. Or for the first time in years, their sleep hasn't been completely destroyed from hot flashes.
Speaker: And the actual cost, if you pay over time or you amortize it, um it's less than a cup of coffee a day. So your downside risk is you return it for a full refund if it doesn't work.
Speaker: And no you very, very, very few people have ever done that. And your upside is the amount of extra energy, the the investment in your health comes down to less than a cup of coffee a day.
Speaker: And what you can do with that extra energy, you know, Tim Ferriss talks a lot about people thinking about budgeting. You can keep subtracting costs and like go down, but you can't ever go lower than zero. The flip side you can always go oh Like Elon Musk, just keeps showing that the numbers can keep going up higher and higher and higher.
Speaker: And so with that extra energy, what could you do? What would it unlock by making an investment like this? And I think, you know, ultimately, um health is something that you don't think about until you don't have it.
Speaker: And, you know it's like, there's that, there's that quote, you know, everyone, um you got 10,000 problems, everyone has 10,000 problems until, ah until they have a health problem, and then you have one problem.
Speaker: Yeah. And so health is something that you want to be proactive about. And longevity is something that, you know, is a um the the the one there's a lot of uncertainty in life. The one certainty is that you debt death is inevitable and gradual decline of health.
Speaker: is ah is is coming. And so um you want to be proactive and you want to be preventative rather than reactive. And it really is if you don't use it, you lose it. and And so so I think health is is the one thing that is worth investing in.
Speaker: Well, and the decline and the preventative, i do want to push back a little there because I would say where the average person is it doesn't have to be a decline. Like most people are in a deficit now.
Speaker: So making the right moves, you'll actually be in better health 12 months and 24 months from now than you are now, right? yeah It is not an inevitable decline because there are things you can do to improve it. And so you can actually end up better than where you are. Now, yes, the 90 year old you versus the 30 year old you, there's certain biological things, but especially in the near to medium term, you truly can be in better health than where are you said today.
Speaker: A hundred percent. I mean, my, my dad got in the best shape of his life, um, you know, uh, uh, 55 recently. um you know, my, uh, my uncle did his first marathon.
Speaker: ah you know, he, he used to be 250 pounds. He, he did his first marathon at 53. um recently now he's done, now he's doing all the, all the majors, um, flying around the world.
Speaker: Um, so, ah totally I mean, you can be significantly healthier, you know, in your 50s than you were. i mean, my my my dad and uncle are much fitter than me. I'm 25. So certainly, you know, you're not kind of a victim of your own biology. And I think that's, you know, what's so exciting about...
Speaker: the state of technology today, the state of ah the the the longevity ecosystem today. and longevity is still pretty pretty niche. And even if if you even know what that word means, well live it you know you're probably in really you know in in in pretty good stead. For the first time in human history today, we are no longer victims of our own biology.
Speaker: That's so exciting. Yeah. the The power more than ever is in our hands. And as as long as we're bragging on our fathers, I will say, you know, my dad, very similar story. ah He, he was a cardiologist. He was, you know, he's a physician. He's trained in this. You think he knows about health and, know,
Speaker: got him Tim Ferriss's four hour body. And over the next year, he lost 65 pounds. Wow. So carb diet started running half marathons. Now he does the Peachtree road race every year, wearing his high school singlet. He now can fit back into his running stuff from when he was in high school. And, you know, you each need their own aha moment, right? It could be you have a health crisis, you're like, Oh, this is wake up, I need to do it. He had just had a grandchild. And he's like, Look, I want to be on the ground playing with my grandkids, right? Like my life, I want to look different than what it looks like right now.
Speaker: And like you said, once we have that aha, we have tools never before available to humans at our fingertips that we can access to improve our biology, to change our entire trajectory.
Speaker: So ah Thank you, Harry. Like, I i love what you've built, what you're doing. i know with AI and everything else kind of overlaying, it's only getting better from here.
Speaker: ah For those who are excited, want to learn more about you, about Orion, where can they find you? OrionSleep.com and then, you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, my my name, Harry Gostetna on X as well. um Yeah, and I think just, you know, leave with this. ah with this i think What is so exciting is we're we're in the midst of this consumer health revolution and ah the health system is shifting from being reactive to being preventative.
Speaker: And, you know, all these amazing preventive health companies like, ah you know, Aura and Whoop and ProNuvo and Function Health and Superpower and companies like Orion, you know, really ah we can make a decision now to where we don't have to be victims of our own biology.
Speaker: And that's so exciting. So exciting. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other healthspan role models on Alively.com.
Speaker: Enjoy a lively day.
