How Elon's Tweet Made Fasting App Zero $1M in a Day

0:00 I think we did a million dollars in a day when Elon out of the blue he just wrote the zero app is quite good. Just that tweet and sales exploded. But you know since 2023 it's been a very humbling experience that it's not just about product. So much of it is about the growth stack and it's what made me feel kind of a little outmoded where oh let's just build a great product grow organically get some tweets and we'll just keep doing this when other people were coming at it copying our product. Who were some of the early adopters of Zero and what were some of the primary growth levers that you used to start scaling Zero into the world's number one fasting?

0:36 >> I just think we had really amazing timing where we were early but not too early and this intervention was being talked about more and more by the Hubbermans of the world and the Peteras of the world and we saw early really rapid adoption. >> AI has leveled the playing field. The bottleneck has shifted to distribution for a lot of consumer apps. You almost have to start with the end in mind and understand what your growth and distribution strategy is going to look like and then work backwards to how you engineer the product.

1:05 >> I think one of the things that we can lean on that a new entrant wouldn't be able to is 8 years of history, brand trust, existing users who might want to avail themselves of this new offering. 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.

1:38 Let's get into the show. This episode is brought to you by RevenueCat. The world's best apps use RevenueCat to power their subscription infrastructure, manage customer data, and grow revenue across iOS, Android, and the web. From any developers launching their first apps to category leaders like OpenAI, Notion, and Ladder scaling to millions of users, RevenueCat handles the complexity of monetization so you don't have to. Learn more at revenuecat.com/subversive. My guest today is Mike Maer, CEO of Zero, which is the world's number one fasting app. In this episode, I talked to Mike about how his first company, FitStar, was acquired by Fitbit just as Mike was being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, about the important role that intermittent fasting played in his recovery, about how he then went on to scale zero into the world's first mainstream fasting app, and about how Mike expects the company to evolve as GLP-1 medications like Ozimpic and Wagi are redefining the fasting category.

2:34 All right, welcome Mike to the Subversive podcast. This is going to be a special episode for me because we met each other over a decade ago when I was a board observer at your first health and fitness app called FitStar and now you're the CEO of Zero and and you've you've kind of created a new category in intermittent fasting and so that's going to be the focus of the episode today. Why don't we just start with what is zero and and the short version of what inspired you to found it in the first place.

2:59 >> Yeah, it's great to be here Phil. Awesome to see you in this new domain from when we worked together last 10 years ago. feel it was like forever because it was. So Zero is a very simply an app that helps people learn intermittent fasting, the benefits of it, and how that leads to sort of short-term desires to come into zero, which is often weight loss. And our mantra internally is come for the weight loss, stay for the longevity. Because fasting unlocks so many other metabolic benefits, but really zero is an introduction for people, a way to form the habit around fasting as an entry to metabolic health. What led me to start it is is a whole story unto itself, which you're privy to. A lot of your viewers won't be. So, let me know how you want me to parse through it because it's it's not a short story, but I'll try and make it interesting.

3:49 >> Yeah. Well, let's start let's go all the way back and start with what first inspired you to start building products in the health and fitness space and then we'll pretty quickly get into the very unique story that led you to zero in particular. I >> I was a first-time founder at the ripe old age of 41. So, you know, I I went to college and graduated in the early 90s and the path there was go work for a company young man. you know climb the ladder and that's what I did. I worked in finance, I worked in tech. Intel was my first you know tech company few startups and I the whole time I was just building my capabilities learning how to lead teams getting more responsibility but always under the umbrella of a company. And later in my career, in that path, in that chapter of my career, I was I found myself at AOL in 2010. It was like, you know, during the great financial crisis, jobs were really tough to get. I'd been at DIG and DIG had its own story of of ascension and decline. And I found myself in 2010 like I need a job. It's like all about survival. And I got offered a job at AOL. at the time they were rebooting and you know it was like this opportunity to reboot this old tired brand. Well, I did that job for exactly one year because I thought I can't do this anymore. And it it really caused me to think about like what am I doing? Like I've been climbing the corporate ladder. I've had the modicums of success I guess on a resume but in terms of personal fulfillment I felt like I was really questioning. Maybe it was the midlife crisis thing, you know, turning 40, >> trying to find purpose, but I didn't have the language or articulation of that. I just felt anxious and a little bit lost and what can I do? What should I do? And when I, you know, had those moments of reflection and frankly being scared shitless, I thought, well, you know what? at this point, I don't feel like I can keep doing what I'm doing because it's just not making me happy. it's making me really unfulfilled. And so I thought, you know what, I'm seeing all these other people go and start companies. That seems really cool. I'm older than most of them, but I know a lot of people and so why don't I go do that? And so it was almost that impetuous. And I knew, of course, it was much more difficult than that. But I I I thought no time like the present to try my hand at entrepreneurship. And so I did that. The first idea that I had, I won't go into it, was a flop. I raised money from amazing people like Mike Maples, Roger Mcnammy, all these incredible people who I'd met along the way, titans of Silicon Valley and said, "Yeah, Mike, we'll we'll bet on you and this idea," which I found out later that they weren't that into. and about 3 months into this first idea I tried, I was like, "I can't do this. I'm not connected to it." I kind of just did this on a whim. And I felt like at that point like truly lost because I had left this corporate career to try entrepreneurship and now I'm failing at that. And I went back to my investors and I said, "Look guys, this isn't working. I haven't spent much of your money and I I want to give it back because I just don't want to walk off a cliff with your cash when I don't believe in what I'm building." And I remember Roger McName told me he said and Mike Maples both they said Mike we never invested in this idea. We didn't actually love the idea we invested in you. And on top of that they said we're not taking the money back. You need to go figure out what to do with it that's going to be important in the world and fulfilling for you. And that was simultaneously humbling as hell and scary as hell because they didn't let me off the hook. I thought I was doing the right thing and they're like they challenged me and thank God because then I was truly in a moment of being in the the nater of this experience and having to go figure it out. And Roger McM said I I told him I was thinking about getting out of the valley. I was reading Techrunch and there's all this noise about people getting $10 million of funding and which would be a hundred million or a billion today, but back in 2010 that was the that was the the amount of the seed run and and you know seeing these you know wonder kid 22 year olds crushing it and here I am at 42 kind of tail between the legs and I had to turn off the noise. I just had this instinct like I had to get out of seeing everyone else's success and feeling like a failure even though you know that a lot of those things are embellished and you only hear the good stuff. So Roger told me he said look if you really want to get out there go to New Zealand if you have the time and the money and I took him up on that. So I I I literally if you want a back I was I was single didn't really have much of a job or at least I wasn't doing that much right then. if you want to. Got a backpack, flew into Christ Church and had no itinerary other than just just decompressed, reset my brain. I wasn't trying to think of a new idea or how to pivot the company. It was just to get a minute, get a break from the noise. And so I I rented an old van and I drove around the South Island and I finally felt relaxed, got into more of a creative space. Again, not intentionally trying to think of the next thing. and and during that time I was really I've always been into fitness and health personally just always been a throughine of my life and I was always into kind of at the time the health tech it was like polar heart rate watches back in the day this is like pre Fitbit or maybe concurrent to Fitbit but quantified self was this new thing >> and I found myself out in New Zealand on these epic long hikes and I was coming toward the end of my trip and I was doing a hike one day and it was just gorgeous out and I was tracking my heart rate my mileage and and I thought, I love this. Like, I don't know what this is in terms of a company or a product, but I love endorphins and being healthy and sharing those experiences with friends and community. And so, long story long, that was the genesis and the kernel of me starting my first real company, FitStar, around health and fitness and bringing technology to it back in 2011.

10:16 >> And that was right around the time we met. So I was at Trinity Ventures as as a young associate venture capitalist out of business school and I think FitStar was actually the very first board that I was invited to join as an observer which was such an amazing experience for me. So let's do the short version of the trajectory of FitStar which really did work right up until this pivotal moment when Fitbit decides they want to acquire FitStar and it's literally as the acquisition is going through that you get some really difficult news and so let's talk about that story. Yeah, I'll try to I'll try to be more succinct this time. so FitStar's going my my my co-founder Dave Rhala and I we had we were really into something novel. We were regularly featured top of the app store in health and fitness. you know for the audience basically fitstar was an iPad app a workout app video based workout app but unlike at that time DVDs and things which were static we brought our video game bonafiday to the equation and made fitar u adaptive so that the if you were just starting out it would be easier if you were more advanced or wanted to push yourself it would extend out the video scenes and it was really novel at the time and really cool and people noticed including Apple and so we were growing the in San Francisco. I'd been striking up partnerships and talks with various companies. Fitz Fitbit being one of them. In November of 2014, I get a knock on my door at the office from my friend Tim Roberts over who was leading product at Fitbit. And he he came in and he said it was almost these words, "Mike, we want to buy the company." And I was like, "Oh my god."

11:53 like from all the other trials and tribulations of getting here. It's like a founders's dream to have Fitbit, which at the time was, you know, top of their game and about to go public to to have them come to you. Best companies are are bought not sold, right? just a dream. Simultaneous to that, I had been feeling ill for the last four, five, six weeks. I chocked it up to exhaustion. It was a vague sense of malaise, I guess you could say. I had some night sweats and I just, you know, was was feeling tired beyond standard foundered exhaustion. To put a bow on it, within a week of Tim and Fitbit making the the entree into buying the company, I was diagnosed with non-hodkins lymphoma a week later. Not just any non-hodkins, a rare one called mantle cell lymphoma which typically you know afflicted people older much older than I was. And to put the icing on that cake it was stage four. So it was a very advanced tough cancer within a week of getting you know career defining awesome news.

13:10 >> What was going through your mind and and how did it impact your decision-m process with the acquisition? When you're thinking of tough business decisions or exciting business decisions or the things that we consider kind of big decisions in our day-to-day normal life, when you get news like that, it eclipses everything. And so I the way best way I can describe it is I was having an out-of- body experience. like I was in this fog and very alone because it's just no matter how empathetic people are, it's just really hard to relate to someone and and vice versa when you're facing your mortality. And so, for, you know, a few weeks, I was really just going through the motions and really just focused on like how am I not going to die? and may and and without knowing the answer to that. And so there's no training for that. There's no books to read around that and and and hopefully most people don't have to address that until the very end at a at a ripe old age. So I I was coping is the best way to put it and trying to put the best face on I could for the team. What carried me was a couple things. one is I need to do this for the team like the all of these employees and you know people who are counting on me like that gave me a focus. I needed something outside of myself to be responsible for and that was there was you know a real sav in that.

14:40 and then the other thing was what can I do to be the best patient, best subject possible to try and beat this thing? And beyond that, I was just, you know, literally surviving. >> You end up successfully selling the company to Fitbit and then you come across this research from Dr. long ago that relates to intermittent fasting and the impact it can have on longevity and in your case on your odds of beating cancer. And so talk me through what that process looked like and then we can start to connect the dots to what led ultimately to you building zero.

15:22 >> Yeah, it actually happened a little in a different sequence. So I I got the diagnosis. My first chemo was Christmas Eve 2014. And I've been looking all over for things that made sense again to be that best patient possible in addition to all the clinical drugs. Came across intermittent fasting as an adjunct therapy to chemotherapy in some early work done by Walter Longo who was the head of gerontology at USC. It was only mouse studies at that point. But it made logical sense to me and it went like this. When your body is in a deeply fasted state, meaning three, four, five days, it didn't know the exact time frame. Then your healthy cells enter basically a spring cleanup phase. a a biomechanical pathway called autophagy, which is where when your cells are starved of of glucose, they start feeding on dead cells, you know, basically removing potential future tumors. And when you're getting chemotherapy, chemotherapy, you know, goes after dividing cells, hopefully getting cancer cells, but also getting some healthy cells. You know, when I was getting my chemotherapy, I I fasted and the idea was the the chemo can better target the fast dividing cancer cells and have less of a knock-on effect to your healthy cells that are in this state of autophagy and divisions are slower. And that just made sense to me. And so for my six rounds of chemo, I followed that protocol. I did 5day water fasts 2 days before, one day of 2 days after each round of chemo. And after two rounds of chemo, I got a check-in scan. I went from stage four to no detectable cancer after two of six rounds of chemo. I'm always very careful to say, I'm not saying it was the fasting, it was the combination of things and just goddamn good luck. But it was profound enough for the doctor to say, "Holy that's that's notable."

17:17 So, that was my introduction to fasting. A very extreme version. Don't recommend you know, being in that situation or or doing it that aggressively, but I figured why not? You know, I wasn't emaciated. I could handle it and I did it. >> Yeah. At the very least, it worked for you. And and it must have taken a lot of energy and a lot of discipline to do that on top of everything else you were going through. what gave me the agency that I was seeking. Right? So, when you're in these situations where you feel helpless, what can you feel like you're in some modicum of control of either in your body or your mind? And that's what it really gave to me was feeling like I was being part of the treatment that I was, you know, pushing myself to be that best patient possible. But what it did was, you know, it opened the Pandora's box for me to discover all the benefits of fasting and and some of my friends like Kevin Rose who plays a role in the in the story of zero to see what I was going through and get interested themselves and you know kind of that wrote the next chapter for starting zero more therapeutically than acutely when you have cancer. Hopefully preventing it is was the idea. You'd met Kevin Rose, I believe, when you worked at DIG, right?

18:35 And so he's this friend and and and connection, and you sort of both get interested in intermittent fasting. How did that ultimately lead to you taking over zero? >> Yeah. So Kevin had visited me in the hospital and was tracking my progress. I told him about this extreme version of fasting that I was doing. And Kevin's, you know, a wonderful human and and so curious. And so, of course, I'm in the hospital room, you know, trying to close the deal with Fitbit. And he's like, I hope Mer makes it. And by the way, this could be really cool little product to bring people into fasting. And God bless him. So, he started as a weekend project. He kind of took the inspiration from learning about fasting himself. And what what Kevin does is he takes that insight >> >> and very quickly stood up the very earliest version of Zero which was a onescreen timer app that because of his platform and his network he you know built it with a couple friends and tweeted it out and started to catch some interest from people even though it was dead simple.

19:44 Couldn't have been a more simple product. There was no registration. There was definitely no monetization. And it was just a one pager, but that was where the kernel started. And when I eventually ended my tenure at Fitbit and I was thinking about what's next, I couldn't get away from my experience obviously and how fasting I thought could be such a important intervention for people and I wanted to bring it out to the masses. And I thought, well, I can start something up myself or I can see what Kevin's doing with this little thing he started on a weekend. And see maybe if he wants a home for it cuz Kevin's always doing different things.

20:19 And sure enough, he said, "Sure, take it." And, and by the way, I'm at True Ventures now. We'll seed fund it with, with Tony Conrad. And that's really how it happened. It was very organic. it's like all the things you mentioned like Jenga pieces, like all the pieces that fit through my throughine of my career is just one thing stacking on another and that was just another example of it. >> Well, it sounds like an incredible story of friendship but then also a story of mutual interest in this new field of bringing bringing technology to intermittent fasting. And one thing I want to key on there is the simplicity of the minimum viable product, right?

20:59 Because I think as entrepreneurs so often we have this tendency to overbuild and over complicate things. Meanwhile, consumer attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Microsoft had the study in 2015 that said the average human attention span had gone from 12 seconds at the turn of the millennium to just 8 seconds by 2015. Whether or not you believe in that exact study, there's no doubt that people are getting shorter attention spans. And so a simple MVP is really important. Some of the best products like Instagram started off very very simple. And so what do you think inspired Kevin to start with such a simple product and how have you tried to carry that through into the product and design decisions you're making with zero today?

21:35 >> Yeah, it's such a great insight and I'd say I fall into the camp what you described is I want to over complicate because somehow it's more valuable or it's more challenging to build. So maybe that makes it more defensible or just maybe it's an ego stroke. I don't know what. And Kevin's superpower is he just clarifies things down to the lowest common denominator most important thing in the best way possible. So I really credit Kevin for teaching me that ethos. That's what he brought to bear with zero. If I if I can just get people to take one action a few times a week and make it dead simple, but make it rewarding just to see time move while they're doing something for their health, maybe that will resonate. And sure enough, it did. The visual design has definitely changed and some of the artifacts have changed. When you fire up Zero today, it is still right in front of your face. The first thing you see is a timer. it's either moving or it's inviting you to have it move. And so even though the product has gotten, you know, more textured, more varied, more complete, that is still our northstar eight years later for what we do. And I think that it's it's because that is the core experience and we don't want to you know, we don't want to taint that.

23:00 >> Yeah. I think it's I think it's so important to have a core experience that is built on an insight that's pretty enduring, right? That years may go by, but that core insight which leads to that core experience that's the foundation of both the aha moment and the habit moment in the product tends to stay pretty stable in the best consumer companies. You could you could point to plenty of examples and it sounds like that's been the case with Zero as well.

23:25 There it is. But there's also a flip side and the flip side is that so we started zero is very novel. We you know we created a category for all intents and purposes. and we saw early really rapid adoption crazy adoption. you know the first year we had no monetization. And then we turned on a basic subscription back in let's see 2016 17 and immediately had like $5 million of ARR within a half a year which back then even even now it's that was incredible pace but with that simplicity comes very easy duplication very easy copycatting and very quickly when we started to see that success we saw competitors unabashedly pixel for pixel in some cases, even our name in some cases, copy paste what we built. And so it's a double-edged sword that simplicity without a lot behind it, either distribution, community, something else to keep it sticky, can have a very compromised mode.

24:31 >> Yeah. Well, and I think it's an especially important lesson today in the AI era because it's never been easier to copy a UI. And so it's great to have a simple product when you're just getting off the ground and getting that initial wedge, but then you need to build around that simple product a community network effects compounding growth loops as much as possible to keep it defensible. So let's use that as an opportunity to talk about who were some of the early adopters of Zero and how did you go about acquiring them and what were some of the primary growth levers that you used to start scaling Zero into the world's number one fasting app? Yeah. So early on it was you know this is like the era of Wolverine and Rose Science was you know sort of coastal 30-year-old males was really who funneled into zero you know biohacking and all that kind of crowd. but but at the same time when we updated the product and actually started to do outreach via podcast and some media appearances and fasting was coming into the culture on its own. It was basically what happened to meditation maybe 5 10 years before where people were desri discovering these ancient practices for mental health or physical health. fasting was having a moment at that time and I would like to say we engineered that and created that. I just think we had really amazing timing where we were early but not too early and this intervention was being talked about more and more by the Huberman's of the world and the Peteras of the world and and then you start to see it in Condast magazine publications. We just caught this wave at the right time with a very simple product and that's what started to bring it much more mainstream audience because at that time we were still you know pretty much alone in the app store. The copycats were further down and so we were able to ride really an organic or earned media wave into our next trunch of growth into a more mainstream audience.

26:35 >> Got it. So it sounds like a lot of it was really you helped create the category. the app store was much less crowded at that point, particularly in this new category you were building. and so a lot of it was just organic word of mouth showing up in app store rankings. Another question I want to ask is, you know, fasting was still relatively fringe at the time. The clinical research was thin. You happened to stumble onto it given your cancer diagnosis, but how did you build the trust and credibility you needed to get some of those early adopters who weren't already totally sold on intermittent fasting to give it a shot? We we've invested a lot in content and you know what we we always like to position ourselves as being as credible and sciencebacked as possible. We have we've had a couple different chief medical officers which I don't think any fasting app has ever well maybe had a bonafide chief medical officer but we've had people with incredible clinical profiles and you know decades of experience around metabolic health. So we put the investment into that credibility and I think it's also in how we treated our our consumers in the product. Like if you look at some of the other weight loss focused fasting apps, some of the tactics feel a little bit aggressive. and their advertising feels kind of shady and very much overpromising. and you know they'll have swimsuit models and it's just a vibe that feels a little bit like snake oil or vanity. And we've we really tried to position ourselves more around the idea that sure weight loss is important.

28:17 It's important not only from looking good but actually being metabolically healthy, but here's all the other benefits that confer once you start this practice. We just always oriented the product and the marketing around those points. And I think a lot of people noticed whether it's they themselves discovering us or when they were doing word of mouth like these guys are legit. They have a chief medical officer. They're not just about, you know, 6 weeks to six-pack abs. It's it's the real deal. At least they're trying to be.

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29:18 you had the benefit of sort of creating this category within the world of mobile apps, but in any mature category, you end up having to carve off a niche for yourself. And I would say at health and fitness, that's particularly true because it tends to be a very crowded category. And so, you know, they're like the beach bodies of the world, but then you're you're taking the like slow but steady approach of really grounding all this in the research and in the lifestyle and and not just the like, you know, look good quick type scheme, although that's certainly a part of it for some users. It it's actually it's a it's a good point and I I like to think that's our approach, but it is increasingly difficult in the world of social media and it feels like there's almost less scrutiny or critical thinking around some of those claims that people are just kind of glomming on to something that they can justify.

30:11 If it's a quick fix, let's do it. so I like to think there are a lot of people that care about the science and care about doing it for the long term, for the for the healthiest reasons, but it's it's it's a challenging media environment to to push through. And I'll be honest, you know, Phil, we were a little bit arrogant about, you know, if we build a better product, we'll continue to have the growth. And it was a real wakeup call for us. And you know, we kind of hit our peak around 2022 23 with COVID was another and Elon Musk tweeted about us like we got I think we did a million dollars in a day when Elon out of the blue nothing you can engineer said he just wrote the zero app is quite good and that just that tweet and sales exploded. We had a few other moments like that, but you know, since 2023, it's been a very humbling experience that it's not just about product. So much of it is about the growth stack.

31:08 And it's what made me feel kind of a little outmoded where, oh, let's just build a great product, grow organically, get some tweets, and we'll just keep doing this. when other people were coming at it copying our product but being extremely sophisticated at the growth side. We're still playing catch-up there to be honest. Like we we've always been product people. We haven't been as strong as all the monetization tactics and growth tactics and that's been a really humbling experience for us and for me personally.

31:39 >> Well, I really appreciate being so authentic and vulnerable about it cuz you're certainly not alone. I think every entrepreneur is feeling this right now, right? Like it's it goes back to what we talked about before. AI has leveled the playing field. It has made software development faster, cheaper, and easier than ever. You don't even have to be technical to build a mobile app anymore. Right. And you can get it to market within days or even hours. And it costs very little money. And so what that means is the bottleneck has shifted to distribution for a lot of consumer apps. That's right.

32:07 >> And it's not good enough to build a great product. you you you almost have to start with the end in mind and understand what your growth and distribution strategy is going to look like and then work backwards to how you engineered the product. Still, having said that, it must have been an amazing moment to have Elon Musk tweet, "The Zero app is quite good." He's he's he's not easy to impress. so that must have been a highlight. But let's use this as the transition into our our last big topic for this episode. And that's around where zero is heading particularly in the wake of GLP1s and all of the ways they are reshaping the health and fitness category and particularly weight loss which I know is a part of why people fast. You said that at the very beginning. So, you've told us the story of the origin behind Zero and why you built it and the decisions you made designing such an elegant core experience that attracted this really loyal group of early adopters. Let's just start with where is your vision for where Zero is heading and then we can get into some of the more specific details around monetization strategy and and distribution. So for zero, our mission has always been to improve people's lives through education around and habit forming around metabolic health. So that includes weight loss and then learning how to modulate intake of food and what kind of food you're intaking to live a longer healthier life, health span, lifespan. That mission remains. But since 2022 2023 with the introduction and amazing promise and growth of GLP1s it's undeniable that there are other ways to achieve metabolic health both without intervention na naturally and with the aid of pharmaceutical. GLP1s are probably the most impactful amazing drug of our generation. although the madna the new madna cancer vaccine is in my for my money even more interesting and important but GLP-1's huge market almost overnight. I don't think there's ever been a faster adoption. There's never been a faster adoption of a pharmaceutical by the mainstream in terms of doses given. And what we found is that while many people do not want to take the medication for reasons around cost or not being reliant on a medication for their for their weight loss, there are so many people that are that have tried things including fasting, different diets that for one reason or another, no fault of their own, are not reaching their goals. And for those people or people with co-orbidities or sleep apnea the indications keep growing GLP ones are this incredible option for them. And what we saw that in the data was that you know at the beginning of 2025 we tracked our users about 5% of zero users just a year and a half ago were on a GLP1 and maybe 10% were intrigued or interested. It's not that long ago. Fast forward to May, and it's probably May 26, probably even outdated now. A third of zero users are on a GLP1. Another full >> another full third are interested or actively seeking one. And only a third of zero users say they're, you know, not never GLP1, but not interested. So almost overnight in the span of an 8-year company, this medication and the benefits of it have changed the game. And so what's the natural follow on for us? Well, if our mission is around helping people maintain metabolic health and there's now a a safe and effective pharmaceutical that can help people reach that goal. we need to be a part of that. We need to adjust people where they are responsibly with the oversight of a chief medical officer who deals with weight loss both with GLP1s and naturally. But we need to address that that market, that opportunity, and what the user ultimately wants. And so that's what we're doing.

36:14 >> And so let's talk through some of the more specific ways you're doing that. I know one of them is you've repositioned yourself on the margins around protein and muscle building and protection. So lose fat, protect muscle. How much of that shift was a response to the GLP1 era and and how is it manifesting not just in your marketing but in how you build build or design the product? >> Yeah. so it was a very methodical approach where we knew the GLP1s were something we wanted to be interested in but we couldn't just start chilling the drug because when you're on a GLP-1 a lot of things matter in terms of your outcome short-term and longterm. The number one issue people face with the GLP-1 other than side effects which can be pretty acute for some people like nausea, vomiting, constipation. But one of the biggest hallmarks of people that don't really track how they're taking the drug is muscle loss, sarcopenia. So their appetite gets suppressed. Let's say you're normally ad libidum taking 3,000 calories a day. You're kind of naturally getting enough protein by just consuming openly.

37:16 But if your appetite gets suppressed, you're now really full at like 2,000 calories a day, for example, and you don't change the fuel mix of the food that you're eating, you are going to be underproteined and you are going to face muscle loss, which again is the most common long-term side effect. It has lots of downstream implications, young or old, that is not good. now the cool thing about what we did in 2025, rolling out stuff around protein, tracking your protein, take a picture of your food, we'll tell you how much protein's in it, what percentage of that meal is protein, how to reach your protein goal for the day, is that guess what? People fasting also are eating less food, also need to be paying attention to muscle loss, and also need to be preferencing protein in their meal choices. So, it was a universal feature to to release this food tracker with a protein emphasis for both people fasting and ultimately on a GLP-1. It could serve sort of both masters. Hydration, the same thing. Tracking hydration, super important on our GLP-1. When your appetite's suppressed, you often times aren't getting enough water. And I personally know people that have been admitted to the going into renal failure because oh my gosh, I just wasn't as hungry, but I wasn't drinking enough water and my kidneys went into distress. this stuff isn't widely talked about on TikTok or where people are saying I had the best experience, but in the clinical community, this is well known. Sarcopenia, kidney issues, hydration, constipation is also affected by hydration. So these are all the things that we built into the product leading up to now. testing it, refining it, setting ourselves up on a foundation that we could then responsibly and in a differentiated way come out with a GLP1 product that would not only give you the medication but guide you, guide you in how to take it, what you're going to be experiencing, how to eat differently, how to pay attention to your exercise and hydration intake, what to expect from a physician who has seen thousands of patients going through all this stuff. That's the next chapter of Zero in addition to keeping fasting. And what's last thing, what's really cool about Zero's entry into the space is that a lot of the incumbents out there, their model is selling you drugs, right? So, I won't name names, but you know the names. Get on a GLP1, experience the weight loss, and no real offramp. Like, >> we're you're now an LTV customer. You're spending one, two, three, $500 a month on these medications. We don't want you to go away. for zero, it's quite different. You're either in one of two modes. When you're in zero, you're either on zero proper or you've been using fasting. You know what? I want to I want to finally get that last bit of weight or deal with a health issue.

40:06 Maybe my blood sugar's high. I'm going to go on a JLP1. Well, guess what? We can prescribe you the drug. We can make sure that you're on boarding into it and your experience during it are amazing because of all these tools that we're going to give you. And guess what? When you are ready to try tradeoff and you've talked to your doctor, we now know all of your experience in zero, all of it in the GLP1 product and we have a landing pad for you now to maintain lifelong weight loss and metabolic health that you've just learned by having the tailwind of this drug.

40:38 The number one other problem people find when they get off of a GLP1 is all the weight comes back. So they've lost muscle and the weight comes back. And that's exactly what Zero Next is designed for is that home base when you want to get off that we will keep you healthy lifelong. >> Yeah, I love that. I mean, I've never seriously considered going on GLP-1 medications myself, but I have plenty of friends and family members who've considered it. And it's it's always hard for me to believe when you hear about this miracle drug that has no drawbacks, right? It's it's just it like it it doesn't generally pass.

41:11 >> I wouldn't say no drawbacks. It's it's it's yeah, it's there's >> that's the point I'm trying to make is there always drawbacks, right? There at the very least there always side effects and at least until the drug is is really well understood and and it's and it's been mainstream for for long enough that you understand all the corner cases. >> And one of those drawbacks is muscle loss. It sounds like one of those drawbacks is potential dehydration, which can lead to complications like stress on your kidneys. And so what I'm hearing is you took the initial core value promise around zero, which was allowing people to monitor their health and their nutrient intake and their weight while they were fasting in addition to just timing their fast. And now you're applying it to another adjacent use case, which is you're on GLP-1 medications to manage your weight and improve your health, but you still need to understand what that's doing to your macros and to your protein intake and to your your hydration. And so let's talk through how that's impacting your business model because it's pretty incredible that you were able to get to you mentioned 5 million plus AR 1 million in a day after the Elon tweet from a product that was essentially monetizing a simple human behavior which was not eating. and that took you very far. But now the silver lining to the GLP1 trend is it's creating this this whole other constellation of needs.

42:27 So how do you see the monetization model evolving over the next few years? Well, I think what it does is it brings in a whole new cohort of people and and frankly I think it helps us re-engage with people that maybe had turned out of zero because maybe they went on a GLP1. We know they did and they thought, you know what, the product isn't really for me anymore. I'm not fasting. I'm I'm on this GLP1. So re-engaging with our existing base. We have 10 million people in our registered user database that now we can say look if it's for you we have this new offering as well as a huge new cohort of people that we think we have really interesting positioning for which is we're not going to just put you on a drug, you know, kiss you goodbye and hope it goes fine. And by the way, we want to keep you on that drug forever. If you're wanting to and you qualify via a physician that we provide, we will get you on the medication for as long and you you and your physician feel like it's relevant for you or how long you want to spend for it. And then we provide you a home where you can continue that healthy journey. And so it really I think is disarming from a positioning standpoint that we are not just about keeping you on that medication. we want you in our >> we want you in our house because it's a healthy house and it and and you know fasting doesn't require medication but I haven't really seen that done elsewhere you know where it's it's there's a there's a landing pad there's a responsible path and there's a home after and I think that will be really unique marketing for when we launch the product maybe by the time this is released we'll have launched it I don't know but we're in deep work on it now >> yeah Well, to me, it's a continuation of the values you founded the company on, which is we're not going to be the, you know, lose weight fast >> just to lose weight solution. It's, yeah, you're trying to do the right thing. That's that's the simplest way of stating it, right? And >> I would like to believe that over the long run, a company with principles and core values will win out more often than not. Maybe not every time, but but at least with a well-built product and a strong team. and so to round things out before we get to the lightning round, we've talked about how the monetization model is shifting around supporting people taking GLP-1 medications, but let's talk now about distribution. Let's go back to it's the AI era. Distribution has become more difficult than ever. What specific growth loops or channels do you expect to drive zero's next phase of growth?

44:53 particularly in a world where the weight loss conversation is increasingly being dominated by drugs like WGO and ampic. >> Yeah. Well, I think part of it is, you know, we're again finding ourselves maybe not quite as early or preient, but we're in the middle of a tailwind because of interest and efficacy of these medications. I think one of the things that we can lean on that a new entrant wouldn't be able to is 8 years of history, brand trust.

45:23 You know, 10 million users in an email list that, you know, can be our first top offunnel excursion into this new offering, existing users who might want to avail themselves of this new offering. And so, I will say that that's going to be our first port of call is, you know, talking to our existing user base, either current or churned, to help, you know, get the product out the door. you know, learn from them what they're liking, not liking, and that can take us, you know, 10 million 10 million owned, consumers who have expressed direct interest is a nice asset to build on or at least go to market with. And then I think it's really about telling our story more. One of the other I don't know regrets I have is that we've been really internally focused building product. We we've never really done PR and we have great people in the company including Naomi Pila our chief medical officer who you know I think can tell a great story about what we're doing in this next chapter. And so my intention and our intention is to get out there more and talk about our legacy and also why we're different to what's out there today. And so I think that's the other piece. Straight up UA and we'll do that but we're not going to be great at it. We're going to we're going to learn as we go but we're going to capitalize on the things that we are good at which is the brand an existing audience and telling our story getting better at that.

46:52 >> Yeah. Well, we've talked about some of the challenges of the modern online user acquisition landscape with AI and how crowded the app stores have become and you know all all of the growth experts who are just figuring out how to game the Tik Tok algorithm or the Meta algorithm. But I do think there is lasting power to a great story, an authentic brand that really cares about delivering value to its customers. >> Your lips to God's ears. Hopefully hopefully that's true.

47:19 >> I I hope it's true. And and you know, Gen Z is a generation that I think increasingly is wary of lip service and scams and and so they they want authenticity over production value. and so I think Zero is very well positioned to capitalize on its very authentic story. so with that, let's get to our lightning round. And I'm just going to ask you a series of rapidfire questions. I always start with the same one, which is what's the best part about working at Zero? And and what's one thing you would change or are actively trying to change as the CEO? Best part of working at Zero, other than the team I get to work with every day, it's when I'm out in the wild and I'm either wearing my hat or a hoodie or a sticker on my laptop and in an airport or at an office or wherever, someone says, "Dude, I are are you a part of Zero?" I love it. It really changed my life in some way. Still to this day, my most gratifying parts of being part of this company. what would I change? It's always easy hindsight 2020, but I think we really in the sort of late teens, early 20s way overinvested in our opex just got out of control. So, we were generating great revenue, but my god, looking in the rearview mirror, if I could have those years back and do things in a more I wouldn't even call it lean way, just a more responsible way.

48:43 that would be amazing. And we are now like we've you know getting things and AI is of course a newer advent that's allowing that but just reeling in the spending is what I would have liked to change. >> Yeah it's such an important lesson and and particularly an important lesson for entrepreneurs who came up during the Zerp era where it was so easy to get outside venture capital and and that's just not the case anymore particularly in consumer.

49:08 >> I think new folks starting companies now who are bootstrapping totally get this. it was just a different era when we started the company. >> Yeah, totally agree. And and I do think if you can have enough discipline to figure out how to grow organically before you start to turn on the spot, both in terms of expanding the team, but also pouring millions and millions of dollars into meta ads, I think that's only going to help you. if you could go back to the early days of FitStar, what's one thing you would do differently?

49:34 >> I probably would have focused less. Well, there's one thing it's funny. I was in a lot of meetings. I would like I remember my co-founders and my tech team, I would like bring them into meetings because I almost felt like I didn't know what to do. So, I felt like talking about it somehow would help us figure out some of our challenges. And my god, did I waste a lot of time with the team on meetings and it was just almost an excuse for not having a clear plan. and so for all the people that worked on FitStar that especially Dave, if you're watching, I'm sorry for all the meetings and time waste that I dragged you into. I am a changed person.

50:12 I know it's a kind of a random one, but I just wasted a lot of time talking through versus getting clear and doing >> To talk about fasting for a moment, what's the longest you've ever personally fasted? And what are some of the strangest things you've experienced, mind or body, when you're in a very deep fast? >> I think the longest I did was 6 days, which is only a day longer than I did when I was in chemotherapy. I did five day fasts six times over 3 months then.

50:39 I was nuts. But when I was not in a in a a a life affirming state or life-defining state for in a six- day fast, I think there's there's common stages. at the beginning, okay, I'm fine. About 36 hours in, you know, if you're used to doing like slightly longer fasts, you start to feel the pangs of hunger. Actually, 24 hours in cuz you've depleted glucose. You're really craving food cuz that's your standard mode. So 24 hours in, you're kind of like, I'm I'm hungry.

51:10 36 hours in, you're starting to get comfortable with that feeling of emptiness. And then I'd say about 2 to 3 days in, 2 days in, you start to feel weirdly not hungry. You're not full, but you are your your body is adapted to a ketogenic state. Your sort of Pavlovian need to just eat has abaded. And if you're keeping yourself mentally busy with work or even going for walks, light cardio, you actually enter this really nice, light, calm, almost meditative state, and you feel so productive because we don't realize how much time we spend thinking about eating, where to go to eat dinner, what to make for dinner, eating, and then after eating like, okay, I'm going to take a like it is a lot of time. you feel like you've just, you know, like gone into some Tony Stark Superman mode, iron man mode. And so you have all this time, you're mentally very, high mental acuity because you're in a ketogenic state. So you really feel like amazing from or at least a lot of people do day kind of two to five. Then by day five, you're like, "Okay, shit's getting real." Like I I'm I'm I'm definitely more fatigued. my sleep gets interrupted because when you're that hungry, it does have an effect on sleep.

52:36 There's there's, you know, countermeasures to that. But, all of this is to say, I'm not recommending this, but if you do want to try a longer fast, I recommend like a 36-hour fast, you know, as a colloquial called a monk fast. The key is that you get tons of hydration and tons of electrolytes. You are dumping sodium in a fasted state. So 2 3 4 g of sodium a day, which is quite a bit of sodium. really really important potassium, magnesium when you're doing a longer fast. But I felt great and ready for it to be over. The last point, the biggest temptation will be to get to your food plate and gorge yourself. No bigger mistake than eating more than a couple hundred calories when you break your fast. Because if you want to talk about feeling as awful as you can feel in a fetal position, regretting your life choices, it is to eat even a normalsized meal after an extended fast.

53:37 >> Yeah, I I've heard versions of both of those points, the the sort of like calm meditative state you get into around 36 hours and then the mistake of eating too much too quickly after the fast. So, good good lessons for those who want to try it, including me, because this is something I'm interested in in doing more of myself. >> Two more quick tips before you do it. I'm sorry to go long. Don't enter in a sleep-d deprived state. Be like feel really kind of rested and don't carbo load heading into it. In fact, preference fat and protein as you head into it because if you carbo load like I'm going to eat a big spaghetti dinner as my last meal, your glucose spikes.

54:12 >> Yep. >> Drops like a rock and your first 24 hours are going to suck. So, >> protein, fat, hydration, sleep heading into it. Next one is, if you weren't building zero, what other health and fitness startup would you be working on? >> Oh man, that's a great question. I actually have tons of ideas within health and fitness and outside, but I think what I'm really into these days, so you know, I've done zero metabolic health and fitar was body weight training. one area that I'm personally just really excited about and I've seen a lot of benefit from that I I think is kind of taking on its own shape is kettle bell training. kind of random, but there's a whole cottage community on Instagram and Tik Tok. And I think what's really compelling to me about kettle bells is the it's almost like an ancient very simple way to practice resistance training. you know, meditation, ancient practice brought into the modern era, fasting, and I think kettle bells are really interesting because with a very simple device, you can literally get an incredible and and highly varied full body workout wherever you are for relatively low cost. you know, I I travel with them on road trips. I'll I'll throw one in the back of my truck and you know, you can do it at a rest stop, which is kind of crazy, but you can do it anywhere. I I actually haven't brought one on a plane yet, although I I was thinking about getting like a bowling ball bag if I could. My wife won't let me get away with that. But I just think it's this really minimalist but profound way to for a very low cost stay in great muscular shape. And there's a lot of Instagram videos that are very short that actually have a ton of views of different methods for a 5 or 10 minute workout or different moves. And that's that's a fine modality, but I find myself saving them and not really going back to them. And so I don't know, maybe it's some part of my fitar legacy. Bringing it into the kettle bell age is something I spent a little bit of time thinking about. I wish there was a product from for that was already out there that I could just use, but I haven't quite found the one that I would create yet.

56:34 >> Yeah. Well, I love that answer both because I've done a little bit of kettle bell training myself, but also because I feel like with AI bringing down the cost of software development, it just means the whole rich riches and niches thing is more true now than ever. And so when you can find these like highly engaged communities of people who love one thing like kettle bell training, I think that can be a great opportunity that previously might not have just been financially viable because it was too expensive to build for >> it goes back to that distribution but but low cost of entry dynamic that we talked about. And generally speaking, Phil, I just like to build products that I personally want. Like lots of people can look at a market or look at a segment and say I'm going to go build that. for me personally to go through the ups and downs. I have to see the problem and want it in the world myself.

57:19 >> Totally. Well, last question here before we wrap up. As a cancer survivor, what does being healthy mean to you now that it didn't before? >> You know, I I had I would have had a different answer, you know, 6 months or a year out of treatment than I do today. today, you know, 10 11 12 years past my treatment. I really think it's all about just appreciating every day, the gift of every day. I think as anyone who's faced their mortality, one of the gifts that you get if you make it to the other side is just having a very different lens on the beauty of life, the gift of life.

57:59 you know, being with your friends, your family, your your wife, your partner. and sometimes you lose that in the day-to-day normalization that that is our modern life. But I think that gratitude appreciation that's just more organic for me now is one of the best ways for me to be healthier and appreciate being alive frankly. other than that I think it's really just about you know balance. It's it's about and it's a kind of a platitude of an answer, but I try to get enough sleep. I try to, you know, look at what I eat. I try to eat, you know, eat well and fast, but I also enjoy life, right? I, you know, for a while I was just I was very, you know, kind of straight edge, really hardcore about diet and not having any alcohol and and that was great and and people that do that, I applaud that. But for me, like part of life and community and friends and enjoying experiences is just having a balance. Like I can have a couple drinks when I go on vacation. I can skip a workout. I can do all the things that get me excited in life. Some of those are naturally healthy things.

59:10 Some of those might not contribute directly to my physical health, but for my mental health, they do. So balance making sure you're tending toward good choices but not being maniacal about it so that you can enjoy you know back to the enjoying every day you can enjoy the full tapestry of life is I guess my general answer. I think that's a great note to end on and I like to think about it as area under the curve and obviously longevity is part of that. But if you're if you're spending every day just focusing on your workouts and your dieting and your sleep and you're not leaving any room left to just enjoy life with the people you love, then you're not maximizing the area under the curve. So, it's a balancing act.

59:48 >> Fair enough. >> Well, this this has been such a special episode, Mike. Thank you for for joining. Any parting words for the audience before we wrap up? Please, you know, give zero a try if you haven't already or try the new Zero when we launch it in a little bit. So, zero longevity.com, iOS, Android, would love to hear your feedback. You can email me direct, mike maser@zer longevity.com. And have a great rest of the year.

60:13 >> Perfect. And and I will say as a zero user, it's a great product. So, if you haven't tried it already, give it a shot. Thanks, Mike. >> Thanks, Phil. >> Thanks again to RevenueCat for sponsoring this episode. If you're building a subscription app, you can use RevenueCat to deploy native payw walls, run continuous AB tests, automate win back campaigns, and unlock more revenue. I work with dozens of subscription apps, and most of them are already using RevenueCat as their single source of truth to power their businesses. Learn more at revenuecat.com/subversive.