Early Decision-Making to Enable Scalability and Raising VC to Become a Market Leader, w/ Katie Reed

Katie, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

Yes. And Balance is a really interesting company. Did a lot of research on this before this interview. It's a very important company too. But for people who don't know the company, what is Balance doing today?

Balance is a digital fitness platform designed from the ground up for healthy aging, but presented in a very consumer-friendly fashion, much more similar to Peloton than say visiting your local PT.

This is one of those companies where you see it and you're like, yeah, of course, like that was needed. That should be something that exists. Take me through how this came to be, like why this company in the first place, Katie?

Yeah, absolutely. So it was when the— 6 months prior to when the pandemic hit, my grandfather had passed away and he was my absolute hero in this world. Every morning I remember staying at my grandparents' place, I would wake up and see him exercising. No matter how short, how long, how difficult, or even how easy, he knew that it was the key to maintaining agency and having control of his life as long as possible. So 6 months prior to the pandemic, he ended up passing away to cancer. He beat his prognosis by like 4 times the amount of length that he was given, such a tough guy. But eventually, it did catch up with him at the age of 88. And he lived a long, beautiful life. You know, we should all be so lucky, but he lasted as long as he did because of his commitment to exercise. So I'm living in New York City. I'm working at Rowe. I'm an engineering manager. And when the pandemic hits, there's these whispers around the airport shutting down. If you're going to get out and go bunker down somewhere, you better go now. And for me, that was flying back to be in Palm Springs with my grandmother. And I had this front row view of just watching her rebuild her identity. asking herself how does she take care of herself for the first time? What are her hobbies, her activities? And during this time that was so challenging for all of us to be able to feel like we had a hold of anything really and have stable ground beneath us with so much uncertainty in the world, I could take care of my mental health, my physical wellbeing with these great digital platforms like Obé, like Peloton, CorePower Yoga, but nothing of that caliber existed for my grandmother. And I would argue that she definitely needed it a lot more than I did. Because for her, fitness is not just a competitive advantage or something that's a nice-to-have. It really means the difference between maintaining her independence and not.

Okay, there's something I go into that I always love asking about. So when we have a problem in life, whatever it may be, some people see this problem, they're like, oh, that's a problem, someone should solve that. Others like see this problem, they're like, oh, that's a problem. Like, I think I'm gonna solve that. What got you to be like, I'm gonna make a company out of this? Because you could have just been like, oh, let's get my grandma a trainer or like virtually like, oh, I know this trainer, I'll call them up, they'll do a session twice a week with her. Great, done, over, whatever. But you decided to build a company, do a lot more things, raise money, etc. Why build a company out of it, Katie?

Yeah, definitely. So I remember I had just finished a workout. I was sweaty, I was tired, I was out of breath. Kelly, my co-founder, or now co-founder, but old employee and colleague, at ROW, FaceTimes me, says she just finished training her grandparents over FaceTime video with cardio boxing. And she was preparing to be able to volunteer with other older adults at the center to be able to help them out when it comes to exercise. And they were asking for it. And I just said, Kelly, you're an absolute angel, but scrap everything we've been working on. This has to be bigger. It has to exist. Can you get to work tonight? And she just looked back at me and the light bulb had gone off and she's like, yes. And I remember we went straight to the laptop, we set up a website that night, and then we were like, okay, what's next? We think, we know this is a great idea, but hold on, let's get some data to actually test it out. Let's go test our hypotheses and let's see if this actually has legs here.

Okay. That exactly is where I wanted to go. Perfect. How did you test this idea, the initial product, or even this initial test you did for Balance in the first place?

Well, we definitely wanted to test people that we didn't know to eliminate any type of friendly bias. We wanted to get as true of accurate data as we could. So we ended up launching a pilot with 5 independent living communities across the United States, different time zones. Wanted to make sure that people would be opting into this remote environment that was distributed to replicate what a digital platform would be like. We had different types of boutique classes. We hired trainers to deliver classes via Zoom. We set up Google Forms to be able to have folks opt in for different classes of their choosing. So we wanted to test engagement. We wanted to test NPS. We wanted to test retention. We wanted to test if we could prove that we can prove an empirical health outcome with a pre- and post-assessment of the 6 weeks of training to see if we actually moved the needle in terms of health. with digital fitness? And the answers were just an outstanding yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's when Kelly and I wrapped up the pilot and said, we have to do this full-time. There's no way we can do anything else. We were just thinking about it nonstop.

Yes.

And it just felt like Kelly was coming from a place where she loves fitness because of the health benefits, and especially with her own family, how fitness has been able to allow them to take control of their own health and well-being. For me, I've always had such respect and admiration for my grandparents so that when my grandfather passed away, I actually told my grandmother that I wanted to start a company. And she just looked at me. This is 3 days after, it's some time. But she just looked at me and said, Mina, why aren't you crying still? And I said, well, this is my way of grieving. This is my way of honoring Grandpa after everything he's done for me. This is what I can do in this world now with my time here. And this is how I'd like to honor him. So we come together with these, both of these passions, and this is balanced.

There is a lot to unpack there. And one thing I want to go back to, because I love the details, are, okay, you gloss over a little bit this test of we've got 5 communities, we've got trainers, of course. But like, I talk to founders every day, like in the founder community I started in the last couple of weeks, and they are asking obviously details, like the tangible things, like Oh, who'd you reach out to? How'd you reach out to them? All these different things. So I'm curious to start with those five communities. One, like, did you reach out to like seven and you got five, or did you reach out to like a thousand and you got five? Or like, and how did you decide those were the five? I'm curious about that to test this idea.

Yeah. So generously through Dr. Ed Schneider, who's the Dean of Gerontology at USC, his colleague was Kai Xiao. from Eclipse Senior Living. And then from Eclipse Senior Living, they had an independent arm, which was Embark Senior Living. We got in touch with the activities director there, and she graciously allowed us to be able to offer virtual training and to be able to get in touch with all the activity directors on each campus.

Nice.

And then we surveyed all of the folks, actually asked who's interested in virtual fitness. And out of 118 responses, 88% said yes.

I love that. Okay. And then the trainer side as well. How do you get those first few trainers to be like, hey, we're gonna do this new thing. Like, we're very passionate about the space. It's obviously a need, but like, we need you out. Like, where do you find these trainers?

Oh goodness. Uh, so we only have one of those trainers still today.

Okay.

Uh, we originally found them for the test only for 6 weeks, uh, from the Talent Hack. And I don't know if that application actually is running anymore. But that's where we found them. Okay.

And then one other thing about this, like early, early, early days. So you started, you know, you want to start a company, but did you know right away in the beginning, like, oh yeah, like we need to raise a bunch of money to do this and like it has to be massive and all that versus like a lot of people bootstrap a company and they're just like, oh yeah, I'm gonna keep getting customers and be profitable and slowly grow. There's 2 way different tracks because I'm at a venture firm and we see a lot of companies that shouldn't be venture backed. And a lot of companies that obviously are venture-backable. So just take me through that even thought early on. Did you know what it was gonna be?

No, we bootstrapped everything. We bootstrapped everything with a test at least. And then we were going to bootstrap. We left Roe on January 15th, and before that we had talked to some investors. We talked with other founders about their journey in terms of raising money. What are the benefits? What are the pros and the cons versus bootstrapping? And with this type of business, for example, I'm talking to you right now out of our video production studio here in DUMBO. There was a lot of spin-up in terms of building the studio experience and this engaging digital experience that we wanted to have this brand promise to our end users. And that required some capital upfront. And also given that there is going to be a market leader in this space. that has not yet taken that opportunity, there is going to be a first mover advantage, and we want to be able to tackle it as soon as possible. We want that to be balanced.

Going from that pilot then, and you obviously had great numbers from that, like you kind of validated some of the initial hypotheses you have. What happened after that, after the pilot? Because there's like a whole testing phase initially, then it's like, okay, well, now what do we do with this? Take me through that.

This is fun. I think I might make this podcast part of our onboarding for the whole story of Balanced.

Love it.

So we had the pilot, we left Ro, we started raising. We were very fortunate to start working with primary venture partners in New York City. Immediately, we set out to get a production studio in DUMBO and to find space for it. We got some cameras, we set up a very light production set, we turned on the camera, and we said, oh my gosh, what are we doing? What's next? We found local trainers, and that's the answer actually why we're not with our previous trainers. We're filming directly out of New York, and previously our trainers were all across the country that we were testing that pilot with. Otherwise, we could have continued with them. But then it was building a brand. What is something that modern— is modern and resonates? isn't silvery. Everything out there is silvery. Silver sneakers, silver in fit. Something that didn't have a reference to age and a brand that didn't feel like it was dripping in clinical physical therapy.

Yeah.

Talking about balance and being incredibly delicate because the 65-year-old that existed 50 years ago is not the 65-year-old that exists today. Our lifespans have been able to extend due to modern medicine. And now what we're building here with Balance is modern programming to be able to extend our health spans to meet our new lifespans. And that's a very different type of approach, very different type of exercise, a very different type of communication style. Again, all much more same in the theme of, say, Peloton than going to your local doctor or your local PT.

With what you mentioned around the studio in DUMBO and trainers obviously local then for that, But that's a decision where it could have in theory been not a studio and could have just had trainers wherever they are. It could have been affiliate, it could have been not in-house. Just take me through some of those decisions around that, 'cause I've talked to other companies in, I guess not this space, but doing that similar thing in some other capacity. And it's like, do you have it in-house or not? Like, I think I talked to like Future who has their personal trainers in-house, I believe. Like, just take me through that thought process around, around that.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so my background is in engineering. And good software is software that is consistent, reliable, repeatable, therefore scalable. You get the same consistent experience every single time. We want to be able to build that same type of process for our end users. So have the same branded creative set, music, and control the entire ambiance so people knew what to expect and come back, and that we can continuously iterate on what does drive engagement, what does drive love of the experience itself. And have more control over that. And also, there's great talent here in New York. We definitely wanted to start this company in New York City because of the talent, but also it's an ode to all of the places that Kelly and I have been before, namely ClassPass. We're big on New York.

Well, there's enough people there to make it work, it seems like. So I think you're in a good spot. And I love that approach, the Apple approach of sorts, of wanting to own everything, kind of the whole system with it as well as you kind of grow and you can Home that experience in, especially when you're talking about branding and standing out from the crowd too. If you see the same thing consistently, I think it does build some type of experience that's special with them as well. And from that then, okay, so Pilot Studio, like cool, but like you gotta acquire more people on the platform. There's gotta be some business model behind this. Take me through first off how you looked at growing outside of the pilot and then also just branching out from there in terms of more users.

Okay. So when we, when we had the pilot, it was just third-party software stitched together, Google Forms, Zoom, no real core application to be able to build a member journey or user experience around the flow to collect payment processing. We did the pilot for free.

Yep.

So we definitely had to create MVP. We ended up speccing it out and launching it within 45 days. And then launching November 1st. That was payment processing, on-demand videos, live, stitching it all together, Sanity CMS to be able to upload the videos, finding new trainers in New York City, and then also creating the very earliest draft of what we call the Balance Method, which is all the fundamentals of which we teach our trainers from our physical therapists in-house on best practices when it comes to training this new aging population. Thinking about orthopedic concerns, the most common: knee, shoulders, and back, for example. Thinking about osteoporosis and bone density and what types of classes that we want to offer to be able to specifically target those. Or if we're going to have a yoga class and thinking about full— what's it called— twists of the spine, which you definitely want to be thoughtful about when it comes to osteoporosis as So that is what the Balance Method is today and ever evolving.

One thing I'm curious about, so in this entire journey, at some point you mentioned, well, you mentioned Primary Venture Partners, which I've interviewed Jason for this show before as well. And I'm curious with this $6.5 million you raised from like Founders Fund, Primary, Lux, some great VCs, when did that come in in this journey of what you've done and built for Balance? When does this funding come in, Katie?

Yeah. So from the pre-seed, when we partnered with Primary Venture Partners, it was first about operating and building the infrastructure behind everything, the early founding team, the MVP itself, creating this video production studio to film and create the classes. Once we launched in November, then right now we're ready to start talking to Medicare Advantage, actually. And why we're interested about Medicare Advantage is Because like I said before, for my grandmother, fitness is healthcare for her. So it makes sense on why 97% of Medicare Advantage plans out there offer a fitness benefit today. And the market leader with the most amount of market share with Medicare Advantage plans is a company called SilverSneakers. And it's predominantly a gym network that sells complimentary gym access to older adults on these plans. But older adults don't necessarily want to go to the gym per se. They don't feel comfortable working out in front of others, let alone do they know what to do when it comes to workouts that are best for their body type. And the brand, when I asked my grandmother if she was interested in taking a SilverSneakers class online, because they started launching some of those during the pandemic, she just looked at me and said, I'm not old. Why would I do that? And I thought, damn right, Grandma. Why would you? And she's 78 years old wearing an Apple Watch. In her Lululemons in Palm Springs with her pool, living the best life. Exactly who I want to be. Goals.

Definitely goals.

Definitely goals. So once we were able to launch, and now that we're starting to collect feedback on it as we're iterating our classes, we wanted to be able to start talking to Medicare Advantage plans and start positioning ourselves to become a supplemental benefit and to drive more engagement than they're currently experiencing From their current offerings. So that next tranche of funding, this is what we're currently doing. We're talking with plans right now and preparing to go live with them.

That's exciting. To that point, though, raising funding is hard for anyone. Women in particular get a lot less funding, unfortunately. How was that fundraise for you? And had you raised— had you raised funding for a different company before? Ever? Have you ever seen that process before? Start some context for people have that as well.

No, I haven't. And it's stressful. It definitely is. Being a first-time founder, really having a lot of conviction around this product, but also learning on the fly. Everyone here, this team, Kelly and myself, we're learning consistently every single day. And we're growing every single day. And putting yourself out there to say, hey, this needs to exist. And everyone asking, well, what do you mean older adults aren't technical? And it's like, well, let's talk about that. Actually, things have changed, especially with COVID Yeah. Being able— and it was a lot easier because we— I saw that you actually had interviewed Andrew Parker. It was great because Andrew Parker and Papa being able to show how big of a business that Medicare Advantage can be as a supplemental benefit. It was— we were very fortunate because we were able to point to that solution and say, hey, look how big that got. Now look at this, look at SilverSneakers. Think about the Blockbuster to the Netflix. And all of this was really resonating. And especially having an idea that everyone can relate to. Everyone has parents, everyone has grandparents. And after all, we're all aging and we want to be able to build a world in which we all want to age in. So the idea, the vision, it really resonates.

One of the things I want to go back to. So you start this company, obviously have this idea way early on, get your co-founder. Great. It's a lot we could dive into with just that, but I want to know with your team, then take me through building a team for your own company, how you've gone about that. How has that been? It's one of the hardest things I know founders do because they're often like trying to grow a company while building a team, while fundraising and doing a thousand things. Just take me through then building the team for Balanced.

Definitely. So, Kelly, my co-founder, I'll just quickly hop on that. I'm more external while she's internal. She's data ops, has experience teaching fitness, Swiss Army knife completely. Myself, I have more of a product engineering, marketing, branding type background. So, we're perfect 2 sides of the coin, same people, but 2 different sides. Dr. Rob Landell is our first advisor that we started working with, and he started the first physical therapy clinic at a university in the country at USC. He's been with us since day one, so bringing his expertise to the table was absolutely fundamental in being able to get Balance off the ground. We've also brought in a full-time in-house physical therapist, Dr. Andrew Ward. who's been extraordinary, uh, a head of trainer talent, Bradford, who came from consumer fanatic type fitness, Rumble and Barry's.

Oh yeah.

Uh, we've brought in Khan, uh, who has done growth marketing, which is huge because we wanna prove out D2C first to be able to show consumer love, uh, as a value proposition when driving sales with Medicare Advantage. Um, Khan has been incredible in terms of the funnel, thinking that through. Jamal, our product manager coming from Obé Fitness. And then Roger, our founding engineer, who really is like 10 engineers in one, has been able to build the entire system. Marvik, our creative director from Equinox+, coming and really thinking about how do we build our brand? How do we build a brand that is frankly sexy? How do we have a brand where people are proud to bring their water bottle around or even to wear a t-shirt with the Balance logo on it? That's not happening with any fall prevention product out there or brand.

Yeah.

And we want to be that brand. A badge of pride that builds community and is a token of let's have a conversation about this. So that's a little bit of a preview of the team and how we're thinking about building it. If that gives some color for you.

Oh yeah, we're gonna dive into one of those things. 'Cause I have like 2 or 3 people in my community right now that are looking for founding engineers. So take me through that, getting your founding engineer, engineering talent. Because I know they would appreciate it. So any insights, Katie? Would love it.

Yeah. Finding engineers is really tough in this market. I was an engineer myself for a couple of years, so I would consider myself technical adjacent, but not a true architect at the end of the day. So my background being in engineering, my gap was actually insurance. So I added 2 advisors. who have been absolutely phenomenal in helping us ramp up in all things Medicare Advantage. Ling Kong from Kaiser Permanente and Benoy Bensali from ScanHealth. But if you're not technical yourself, I would advocate to get a technical advisor to really help you think through this. Your engineer is incredibly important, or your head of engineering, whatever is best for your org, depending on the original makeup of it. When we interviewed Roger, We bring in a piece of code to be able to walk through and talk about, and a piece of code that they're familiar with. It's setting them up for success to be able to show what they know, something they're very comfortable and familiar with. At the end of the day, we always want the other person to shine with whatever they're a subject matter expert in, and then we try to extend it together. And I remember with Roger's code, it wasn't just one language. It hopped around the entire stack like the Wild West. And I was just getting whiplash from like left to right as we were moving across. And we just thought, wow, that is exactly who we want.

I love it. There's so much to it in terms of hiring engineering talent and finding them, vetting them, et cetera. And like you said, the technical advisor, big piece in that in terms of helping you find out like, okay, what should we be thinking about and everything as well with that. In terms of that, then raising When you raised that funding, what was most of that going towards for your latest round? What was most of that going towards in terms of use of funds?

We definitely want to continue iterating the product. There's a lot to learn about this segment in terms of driving engagement and what content resonates. Is it the trainers? Is it the type of content itself? And making a software experience that is very easily accessible. But at the same time, healthcare sales cycles are a year and a half. We got to be able to survive to show traction with those folks. So a lot of that has given us some time to be able to build those relationships. And luckily we've had some really good fortunate success so far. It's going well.

I love it. One thing we haven't talked about though that we had to definitely dive into more is the program itself. What is this experience like for the members who are using Balance? How often are they using it? How does it actually work? Take us through more of that piece of it and what you're actually offering as your product.

Definitely. So we're offering multiple types of class formats in terms of on-demand. For the tech itself, we want to be able to use the most accessible and familiar type of technology that already exists today, similar to say Zoom for a live experience, and then similar to YouTube as far as on-demand goes, clicking play. And run with it. Our classes range from barre to yoga to strength training to dance cardio. Dance cardio is a total hit. And we're experimenting also with Q&As with Dr. Rob Landell to be able to build community as well around the experience. Being able to provide access to someone with a credible, credible background to answer questions around their health has been extraordinary. They've absolutely loved it and flourished from it because that it helps create equitable access and just knowledge that's sometimes very hard to get. And experimenting also with even outdoor classes, two-way, one-way, how do we build it to be an engaging experience? And then with the on-demand, today it's largely a collection of a video library where people can sift through. Choose their own adventure, but we'd actually like to start building a member journey around it. For example, what about a balanced week? And what is a balanced week? Is it having 150 minutes of exercise, or is it just hitting 3 different classes? And then over time, how prescriptive do we want to get around it? So if we learn that someone has osteoporosis, do we want to incentivize more strength training classes for building strong bones? Or do we wanna be prescriptive around you should get a healthy dose of 40% strength, 40% cardio, and 20% range of motion every single week? And that's what we're in exploration with today.

Okay. From my background being a personal trainer, studying exercise sports science, and working with clients when I— early in my career for a couple years, I'm curious how you think about adherence, motivation, that, cuz it's one thing to Have a program, but I've written many programs that, did you do your work this week? No, I didn't.

Why?

And like, it's a much more mental game and psychology and all of that. How are you thinking about adherence and like gamifying anything and that piece of balance as well?

We're starting to think around adherence in terms of the community aspect of live classes. So having pre and post conversations and making it more of a social experience. And then when it comes to the internal motivations, the folks that we're capturing today are primarily health-driven. These are folks who could benefit, say, from Peloton. But as soon as they figure out when going to visit their PCP that they're prone or at risk of osteoporosis, all of a sudden they're much more intentional around, well, what workouts are really going to help me improve my bone density? So that's the trigger point where people say, well, how do we— how do I be more intentional around functional aging? And limiting the decline of aging when it comes to those common ailments. And that's the time that they start seeking Balance.

Okay, so then they have more. Yeah, obviously trying to get something in particular from their workouts, they're looking at Balance, this offers that as well. Perfect. And one thing I'm curious about with just building this company, taking a step back here, first-time founder, building a tech company that's obviously you're very passionate about. What's been the challenges though? It's never, you know, sunshine and rainbows this whole time. What's been The biggest challenges for you in the last, you know, 2 years, whatever it's been here, uh, of building this company?

I think it's 2 things. It's ramping up in insurance. Uh, Kelly and I came from Ro, but that's cash pay, direct-to-consumer, a very different type of animal. Ramping up insurance, so Benoît and Ling have been phenomenal, and I wouldn't even recognize myself from a year ago, quite frankly. And then in terms of building content for older adults over time, we've had to refine our user personas and do a lot of testing there to be able to get it right. So our ideal customer profile is actually folks around 55 to 75, high capability, low risk, so that we could be very intentional around what type of content are we pushing out, what type of capabilities, in what physical forms are our ideal users. And how do we speak to them and how do we find them? And then how do we make sure that that content really sings and matches their needs and capabilities? Because the older adult, we can't just say 55+. There's so many different types of people out there. And that's what makes it so interesting is that older adults are heterogeneous instead of homogeneous like we are. We're for a one-size-fits-all, which makes it a little bit tricky. But first, we're going to start with standing classes and offer some supported seated classes. But targeting folks that are independent first, that can drive to a gym, for example, they're just looking for more intentional workouts these days.

One thing I'm curious about with any founder I talk to, there are a plethora of things you can work on at any point in time. You're constantly having to prioritize. How do you manage that? You personally, how do you manage that in terms of your schedule, taking care of yourself, all of those things that like, Are not talked about as much from founders, but that is the end of the day. Like if your founder psychology slash what you invest in yourself will really lead to you building a company in the next decade. How do you, how do you take care of yourself in that capacity and manage your schedule?

It's really hard. It's very challenging. There's a few things that I'm very fortunate in. Kelly and I have a beautiful, transparent, thoughtful, empathetic co-founder relationship. We're both on this journey together with 100% trust. So, that includes being able to give each other active feedback at all times, being able to do calendar audits on what is the most important thing, and are we actually spending our time on it, as well as outside of it, an incredible community of friends and family that I am very intentional about. spending authentic present time with. I have a dog named Attila the Honey. It's a little doodle. Walking him and getting outside and seeing his big happy face every morning brings me so much joy. And a partner that I want to make sure I always give my best self. And sometimes it doesn't happen. Sometimes I'm distracted. But how do I recognize that and just take the extra step to say, well, what have I done this last week for her? And how can I be intentional about that? Maybe going into the next week.

What is next for Balanced? They've done a lot already, a lot of progress, obviously, but every venture-backed company has quite big expectations. What is next for you and Balanced, Katie?

We are going through our first security review with a payer right now, which is very exciting because we've been talking about HIPAA, SOC 2, getting ready for it.

Getting robust. Oh, yes.

And then now, and now this questionnaire and everything showed up at our front door. And everyone who's been working on it, who I don't know, I don't, I don't know if they understood. We have Lily, who's been absolutely phenomenal in joining the team, who's owning the security protocols. And I think when this questionnaire showed up, she thought, oh my God, it's here. It's here. We've been talking about it and it's here. And when we went through the audit, she was just a subject matter expert, like knocking them off. I know this answer, this answer, this answer. We've already done this. done that. So to see the vibrancy of the team be so excited about all of the hard work they've put into every single thing that we've been working on and how it's coming to fruition is incredibly exciting. We just moved to being in person Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at the production studio, and folks are loving it in terms of decision-making, how fast information moves. And a piece of our DNA is this production studio that I'm pointing to this way. This is where the product and the magic happens. So we love all being close to it together. So those are some of the things that are incredibly exciting right now.

There's so much happening. And you obviously are working with older adults now all the time. That's what you think about. And certainly to your members of your community here. Um, any trends or other opportunities with older adults that you see and you're just like, wow, I'd love to like tackle that, but I can't because I'm focused on this particular problem, uh, an issue with older adults. Anything else you see just being in the industry? I'm curious. Maybe it was not something else, but I'm just curious for other founders out there who are like, oh, it's an interesting population to work with. They have a lot of needs. Maybe I could solve some of them in some other capacity. And you're kind of in it, so I'm buying you time, Katie. But is there anything else that you may think about?

It's social loneliness. 1 in 4 older adults report being lonely. Lonely, and that breaks my heart. Papa, to a degree, is being able to help out a ton here by being able to have someone come over into your home and help out with XYZ task. Being able to create fitness workouts to be social, that will help to a degree. And we talk about features and what we want to do here with the product in terms of building community. At the core end of the day though, our first focus is to build an incredible class experience that not only do people love it, but they keep coming back because it just works and they feel better at the end of the day with it. But loneliness, that's one definitely.

Yeah, I know talking to Andrew about that with Papa and how they're going about what they're doing. And that's the first time I really thought more and more about this older population and also had Oh wow, I'm gonna blank on who else I had on the show related to this. Daniel, another venture at Generator Ventures, talking about opportunities.

Daniel Kaplan.

Yes, thank you. Why did I forget his last name? Yes, but Daniel from Generator Ventures, but what they're investing in too, you just see that and you're like, okay, there's obviously so much opportunity. And also, like you said before, we're all getting older all the time. 39 minutes older now than when we started this interview. But we're all— it's like where the population is going, you know? So it's like, obviously there's a huge need for this, but people don't think about it until— unless you have someone close to you who affects you, so you think about it more. Or as you get older yourself, you start thinking about it. But it's interesting to see where a space will go and evolve, what gets built in this as well.

Absolutely. I mean, with my grandmother— with my grandmother at that time when I was living with her, The love of her life had passed away. And in those 6 months as well, her sister had passed away, someone she talked to on the phone every single day. And my grandmother is lucky to be in great health, 78, aging in place, no chronic conditions, some early arthritis, but can get around incredibly well and has a very strong community of friends and family around her. But she's very fortunate and very lucky. And even then, it's tough in terms of rebounding. It doesn't happen as quickly anymore. Yeah.

Where can people go to learn more about balance and also connect with you, Katie, if they would like to?

I'm just going to pause there. That was an incredibly sad note to land on.

It's a powerful note.

It is. I just, uh, you know, that's the importance of like— it gets hard as you get older.

Yeah.

Uh, and everyone I think has had to struggle with, I don't know whether it's depression from a breakup and then you go and work out and you get the revenge body. Um, so how does— so with my grandmother and all those, uh, challenges, you know, how does she feel her best self? To be able to rebound. Yeah. And having independence and confidence to be able to get around, to do what you love with who you love is part of that. To answer your question with Balance, people can learn more about us at hellobalanced.com. And if anyone would like to reach out, my name is Katie Reed, as everyone knows here, and my email is katie@hellobalanced.com. And always happy and open to have a conversation.

I really appreciate the time, Katie. Thank you so much.

Thank you.