Sleep Is the Last Unprotected Hour

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom. I'm so thrilled to have on two guys here from Luna Diabetes, John and John, co-founders, CEO, CTO. CFO, leading the charge on a whole new wellness category. John, John, welcome to the pod.

It's great to be here, Neal Bloom. Nice to have us on.

You bet. I think we're actually, John asked, we were like down the street from each other. Probably could see your place from where I am right now on the other side of the 5 here. But it, I'm glad we 3 of us could get together to tell a really important story. Of helping people with diabetes actually have a better quality of life. You want to give us a high-level overview? What is Luna Diabetes?

Sure.

Yeah.

And thanks for— thanks again for having us, Neal Bloom. Look, for decades, people with diabetes like myself have been asked to choose whether you want to stay tethered to an insulin pump or be exposed to the realities of living with diabetes. You've got pumps attached to our body all day, every day, and then pens that can't help us when we go to sleep, which is what the majority of people live with diabetes are using. And it's not a choice, it's a trap, the all-or-nothing standard. And so what we have developed at Luna is a totally new category of insulin delivery, something we call sleep automation, which is about giving the best technology, the best science, and making it more accessible to more people because it works and everyone should have it. And so our story is about taking learnings from ourselves as patients or parents of, of, of, of children with diabetes and figuring out how we can make, make the best science more accessible to more people.

I love it.

And you guys have been working on it not only this for a bit, but in past companies as well, which we're going to get into. You guys are serial diabetes tech founders, which is something I think very special to the diabetes tech category. You find so many founders who have diabetes who are just so passionate about solving their own problems and therefore a huge amount of people's problems as well too. So we're going to uncover that, like, what's— why is that, uh, a very specific DNA trait? But how did it all start? I mean, did it start when you got diabetes, John? Like, why don't you take us through that? Where, when did you really say this this is my path and I've got to go build in this space?

Well, look, you've got two Johns on the call, so we're going to play tag when you say who's John and who's Ed. I'll take the first one. And John, John B has a different story. So yeah, I've had type 1 since I was 4, but my diabetes and company building didn't start, didn't start at 4. It didn't start at 20. It didn't. It started at around 30. I was in a totally different career. I'd even built some companies in tech and digital marketing before. But the diabetes entrance was a frustration of products that I wanted, problems that I had for myself just weren't coming. And I'd meet with my doctors and I'd say, it's coming, I've heard of it, it's coming, but it never did. And finally I just said, I'm going to at least build one for myself. And for me, it was a smart insulin pen. It was making insulin pens which are used by the overwhelming majority of people with diabetes that use insulin, making it smarter. Started with a Hannah Montana watch, which we reverse engineered. I've got it down in my drawer. I can even pull it up and, and help it remember, tell me when I took my last insulin dose. And that was a cascade of products and innovations and selling companies and all kinds of other stuff. But the story was, I've got a problem. It's not being solved. And, and the journey of starting a company was me showing it to people and them saying, I want one and I want one and I want one. And that's kind of how the company started where that wasn't the intention when I built the first prototype.

Hmm.

Really interesting. And the pens still dominate the market today. It's still the number one way that people, Right. People with diabetes type 1 at least are pretty much dominated by applying insulin by pen.

And even in type 2, even more. But yeah, you're totally right. And, you know, the, the, the, the, the fallacy is that a lot of the noise in the industry, a lot of the articles when you go to the conferences, it's all about the most advanced tech. And that makes sense, right? But pumps, which have been around for 40 years, they're not being used by the majority. 65% of those with type 1, you know, 90%, 95% of those with type 2 take insulin, use pens. So, you know, we have to ask ourselves if this technology has been around for a long time and it works and it works well, why are people not using it? And that's the question that we sought to solve and have solved at Luna.

Okay, we're going to get there in a second, but, but take me through what you learned just as an entrepreneur. I mean, what, how idea versus actual reality, turning that into a finished product, because hardware is so much harder than, than, you know, the software.

I think you should point back to John and hear his origination story because he's got an incredible story too, which is very different from mine as how he got here. And it's, it, it, it's going to blend together.

Okay, John B, take us through where did entrepreneurship and really down the path of diabetes start for you?

Thanks, appreciate it. Um, yeah, for me, uh, it began about 20 years ago, uh, with a diagnosis of our youngest child with type 1 diabetes. They were 9 years old, and, um, we had exposure to diabetes because I was part of the founding team of WellDoc, which made the first mobile app cleared by the FDA that could be prescribed and reimbursed. Now, that was for type 2 diabetes we were focused on, not type 1. But with Myla's diagnosis, I was running my own venture capital firm in, of all things, the luxury goods space. And the way I like to say it is luxury goods are getting you to buy something you don't need, pay a price that you should never pay, and then you feel good about it somehow. And yet, you know, healthcare, which our lives depend on, is for the most part kind of a crappy experience. And so I was trying to bring those learnings. So I joined WellDoc full-time. We built that company. I left there, spent a little time at Merck's Global Health Innovation Fund watching, helping entrepreneurs themselves, and then became a co-founder of Bigfoot Biomedical. Which brought to market the first insulin-connected pen that John invented. And so we brought both John's IP, but more importantly, John's expertise and experience to drive the Bigfoot Unity product to market and ultimately into the hands of Abbott Diabetes. So this is my third go-around. I'm most proud of the first two categories I was part of helping create, digital health,. We called it mobile prescription therapy. We did our first clinical study on a Nokia data-enabled phone, 2.5 years before the iPhone. So it's, it's hard to rewind your brain and think about it, but there was a world before we had smartphones and we tried to leverage that technology. And then with Bigfoot bringing to market a connected pen, building on John's legacy, but also bringing that clinical decision engine and helping physicians, which is part of what we did at WellDoc as well. And here we are in our third, but at least my third go around and hoping to make as big an impact and introduce a new category. As John pointed out, new therapy is really the way we like to think about it.

Thank you for the contributions. Like you mentioned, healthcare though, doesn't it feel like parts of healthcare are still run like a Nokia phone? I mean, you mentioned also, John asked like technology, we talk about pumps and big technology, but at the end of the day, people just need to, need to be well. Like, John B., what's, what's your kind of state of healthcare, you think, after all said and done on technology?

Yeah, look, we, we, 20 years ago, we brought an app to market and we thought this is gonna change healthcare. And here we are 20 years later, and it's there, but it's not making the difference that I would have hoped as a global industry. We have too many apps, they're not doing enough work. And my viewpoint is they're not all clinically driven. And we were very disciplined in the beginning with WellDoc about the clinical outcomes. And we did two RCTs. And when the mobile medical app breaks came out in 2011, we got clearance in 2010., you know, people were opposed to the standards and we really wanted to elevate and say, look, if you're going to put something into people's hands, it has to be with clinical rigor. And it was a reason, you know, we didn't have to do 2 RCTs. We did RCTs that we published, like kind of unheard of even in today's market. Even in the diabetes space, RCTs are not a, a norm, but we just felt that we had to drive outcomes. And I see the market is just flooded with non-clinically validated solutions. And I think that's my frustration because as a parent of a kid with diabetes, they deserve solutions. And in Myla's case, just the technology talking to each other, like for Myla, the problems that they have with their sensor talking to their insulin pump, Like, it's not as simple as we have in the world of technology, right? My iPhone syncs with my laptop, it syncs with my iPad, right? Diabetes technology, you clunk around to try and get things to talk to each other. And so it's unfortunately— but like us, we're trying to make a difference and hopefully bringing to market simpler solutions that work seamlessly, that don't burden the individual, that allows the cognitive burden of living with diabetes to be reduced. Is really what we're trying to achieve. And we hope we lead an example in that for, for others to follow.

Yeah. Well, obviously what you've learned and built is compounding into the next thing and teaming up forces between, you know, your guys' two past companies obviously said we solved a certain problem, but let's go solve the next. Why don't you take me through that, that kind of founding story? When did you know that you had to go do the next thing and that was going to be Luna? John S., go for it.

Yeah, so look, the founding story and part of it is, is I can't, I can't admit that I knew all of these things at the time where we came up for the idea. But, but the smartpens that we made and with our third co-founder Sean St. who started a company called Companion Medical that was, you know, made the InPen bought by Medtronic Diabetes. Among the three of us were the creators of smart insulin pens. And those products were about taking the best features of a pump and making them available to pen users during the day. And I say during the day because that's when you're awake, that's when you are, you know, it's a physical process of taking an injection with a pen.

Yeah, it's hard to give yourself an injection while you're sleeping, I guess.

You can't do it when you're sleeping. And so that was about, and I found the, the prototype. So here's the Hannah Montana watch. That was about making the pens smart. But as, as we were running those companies, there started to be an evolution in insulin pumps of automating them. And so that's about taking a continuous glucose monitor and the delivery system and an algorithm and tying them together. And so there started to be a community of people that were hacking into their own devices and making these automated systems. Here's one of the first ones in the world that I made for myself back in the day. And I got a couple other cool ones in the box here.

Yes.

Love Chantal.

It was tremendous, right? Because it meant you could go to bed and you had a nurse looking over your shoulder. You had a doctor looking over your shoulder. Nights would be on autopilot and we wanted to bring that to pen users. We wanted to bring that relief, that comfort, that making diabetes go to the background to pen users. And it was solving that problem that consumed me as I was thinking about how to do it. And the original concept for Luna was actually pretty different. It was about taking your actual insulin pen, putting it into a box, connecting it to an infusion set, and having it automatically give you injections. But I just couldn't get away from the— it felt like you're going to bed with a coffin next to you. And so, but that was the original idea for this of automating an insulin pen. But then it subsequently came up with, huh, why don't we just make the world's smallest patch pump? And so, you know, the journey of getting there was starting with what's happening in the market but what is the market missing? You know, what are the signals here? Are this technology is starting to come, but most people are choosing not to use it, whether it's cost, whether it's convenience, whether it's control. And so that's where we always felt that the existing solutions were not hitting the mark. And then we saw a piece of science that was the, the, the, the real reason we started, which is when we started looking at the data and the clinical evidence behind the best-in-class systems that exists today. We saw that the power of automation, the power of lowering your glucose— over 80% of that glucose-lowering effect happens at night when you sleep. So not only did we feel this was happening, but wow, when we saw that paper and we saw almost all of the best-in-class systems, the benefit is night. We knew that we, we, we, we were gonna go after that.

Just to follow up on that with you, cuz you are a type 1, like take us through the pain part. Like what does it feel like to have a bad night's sleep and be woken up being too high or too low? Cuz it happens to you obviously.

Yeah. Look, I mean, imagine this feeling that we have for those who have kids. It's the early years of kids when your kid is waking up and they need to be feeding and you need to change a diaper that like, Oh man, I want to take care of my kid, but God, I need to sleep. Or the feeling of, did I turn off the coffee machine when I left, or did I close that garage? But imagine that's every night and it's forever. And imagine that you don't have a solution to do that, or the solution may not be affordable, or it may be hindering your body image. Causes real anxiety for people. And for, for, you know, all the data shows that the biggest problem that people have with their diabetes is nights because no one's helping, no one's in control. And so you're forced to be jolted to awake, jolted by an alarm telling you danger, danger, danger, danger. And, you know, even knowing that can happen is not nice. And then when it happens, or if it happens one or two or three or four times a night, it really kills you. It doesn't actually kill you, but it grinds on your soul. And so if you can, if you can have that just go to the fade away to the background and you can go to sleep knowing that somebody or somebody's got your back, you know that you're going to be safe. That is a drastically different night. That is a drastically different way to wake up. And that is a drastically different relationship to this crappy chronic disease that you have. But at least you can shut it off at night for a while and get some sleep.

Wow.

And look, and that hits home. I don't know if— I don't even know if I've told you this. My dad has type 1 diabetes. I grew up around that. He got it at 21 years old. He was in the '70s. And even at that time there was no blood sugar test even. So he would drive from LA to San Diego a few times a week to the Scripps Clinic just to get his blood sugar tested. And by the time he got home in LA, they would tell him, here's what your blood sugar was. So yes, it's definitely come a long way, but sleep hasn't. And we know that sleep completely without the right amount of sleep, like, wrecks your day and wrecks I mean, it, it's, it wrecked him professionally, honestly, seeing that my dad was around that he couldn't do certain jobs just because he had to significantly dedicate life towards his own wellness, his own health. Right. So yeah, a huge, huge problem that's both touches many people, but just collectively a lot of humans that, that was the precipice for what you guys were starting. Take us through where we're at now. And actually, let me just add a lot of other little elements to it here. We all got to meet actually through Sean St. Him and I met when we were running our own startups. You mentioned Companion. He was running Companion in Evo Nexus, which is where I got into for my first startup. And right after Companion, he tapped me and said, hey, I'm starting the next thing. You should, you should take a look. And so Interlock Capital, I think that's how we all met, was right when you were looking at a next round of funding or maybe your first. And yeah, I'm very excited that we joined in. It felt like in the early days, but, you know, it still always feels like early days in startup life, that's for sure.

Day one.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, take us through a little bit about like what's, what's been going on behind closed doors for the last few years in, in taking your prototypes into what's reality now. John S., kick us off.

John B. will do it.

All right.

I've been talking.

Yeah. So we've, as John likes to say, it's not a science experiment anymore. It's actually been worn by people. We've had over 1,700 nights of wear. We've done a feasibility study and a pilot study, and that's really given us a lot of learnings about You know, you put these ideas into a device, into software, and, you know, you're never sure it's going to work exactly how you expected it. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're not. But the reason you do these studies is to test it and improve. And so, we've, through those two studies and our simulation engine, we've refined the product even further. And so, we're on the journey to start 2 more feasibility studies in May. And if all goes according to plan, we'll start our pivotal study late this year. And that puts us in market late '27, early 2028. One of the things that, you know, our product manifests itself in a physical element. You've got a reservoir you put insulin in, you've got this hardware called the controller that's got the algorithm, the battery, and everything else. And we see that and we understand that. What the power of what we've built is in the software and the piece you don't see. And we've been spending some time trying to figure out how do we convey, whether it be a naming convention, we call it Luna Eclipse, the algorithm, but really have people understand because as part of the journey of these products, people want to know that they can trust something, right? And part of that journey of building that trust is not only demonstrating it's been on people for many, many nights, but it's also we have the power of simulation and understand that we have run every edge case that you may never experience. But if you happen to experience one of those edge cases, we've already seen that and we can handle that. And I think part of our journey is trying to get— and we appreciate you giving us this platform— getting our voice heard about what we're doing, this new therapy, how we've built it, our passion, is driven by personal stories, but it's not about ours. It's about solving big problems for millions of people across the globe. And so it's been longer than we thought. We're at 5 and a half years, but medical device is hard. Diabetes is hard, and we're dedicated to seeing it through to get it in the hands of as many people as possible.

John asked, take me through a little bit more, like sleep-only automation. Is it really— Anyone with type 1 who's still using a pen, or are there subclusters of people who are just like, you know, looking after their health more than others? Like, how do you subjugate this a little bit?

Anybody who sleeps is really our target audience.

Okay.

Type 1 and type 2. Type 1 and type 2. Yeah. And you know, Diabetes is hard. And we've done a— for example, we've done a lot of work trying to see if we can recommend to people you should wear it this night and not that night. And it's very difficult for, for people, even with the best knowledge and the best tools, to predict what's going to happen to their glucose at night. There are so many variables, 40+ that affect your blood glucose. And so just like you don't wear— you, you don't wear a seatbelt just for crash day, you wear it every single day because you don't know. And it might be a reason out of— it might be, you know, something that you didn't cause, it might be another driver. Diabetes is the same. And so almost everybody is struggling with night times. Some it's for every single night, for some it's 5 times, and for some it's on pizza night. Everyone is struggling with it and it can help everybody.

You, you mentioned that anyone who sleeps part, which I think crosses over into the consumer mentality now of, of health and wellness, right? And we can see that with glucose sensors where they are creating non-diabetic use cases for people to track their health every day, which used to just be like an Oura Ring or a Fitbit. Now people literally want to check their, you know, their blood health every day. Are you, John B., are you seeing this? There's like a pull into maybe there's, you know, this larger consumer push as opposed to clinical push for the health and wellness piece.

Yeah, I think good or bad, diabetes is itself a unique condition in that it is the only really chronic condition in the world where you as John pointed out, you're in control 24/7. It never turns off. And while it's more acute in a type 1 than a type 2, there's a lot of people with type 2 who can't turn it off either and really should be vigilant. And so as a result, by definition, it's always sort of been more user, patient, consumer-driven. John pointed out the DIY movement where people built their own. And it was, you know, think of any disease state in the world where the people who are suffering from that chronic condition take it into their own hands to build something to make their lives easier because industry's not solving it. That's literally what happened, right? And you had 5,000 or 6,000 people doing it worldwide, rolling their own, having their own automated insulin delivery system before Medtronic got the first device cleared. So it's always had that orientation as a disease state. Where I think it comes into play for us is the marketing of it. And I think the power of sleep is not going to be lost on people with diabetes. So when we did some market research recently, you know, the number one issue that people with diabetes highlighted was sleep disruption through their diabetes devices. And so that messaging, you know, as we get out there and get our voice heard from the end consumer, but we're seeing it more broadly to your point in healthcare, people are taking more control out of frustration, out of necessity at times, but diabetes has always sort of been a leader in this space of consumer-driven solutions. Yeah.

And Neal, I wanna— I want to add a little slightly different theme to this being with how you open, which is, you know, I think customers expect medical devices, many to most of the products that we're living with, they, they look and they feel like a Game Boy from when we were kids. The displays are crappy, the interfaces are crappy, like consumers expect better. Consumers expect, you know, things that look like our EarPods or our Oura Rings or our Whoop bands. And so we think a lot about, you know, what does it mean? How do you consumerize medical devices? How do you deliver a high-end consumer experience, but also one that's affordable and one that meets a broad range of customers? You know, we're not developing high-end headphones, we're developing a solution for the masses, but we can do that in a, with a great experience.

And that's— people deserve that. I mean, you know, there's like a lot of dignity here in our health and our wellness, and it sucks to suffer. Might as well also be delighted in the treatment, you know, as opposed to be slogged through it.

Goes back to the luxury goods, right? We tolerate healthcare, but, you know, we want to be luxurious. We want things that fit right, that work right, that work seamlessly. We deserve it, uh, as, uh, consuming healthcare.

Um, we do. We deserve it.

As, as you know, as John often says, we're going— this is a, an intimate time when you're going to— they're going to bed with our product. That's a sacred space. You don't want to go to bed with a, you know, hunk of plastic that's got sharp edges and whatever else. I mean, that's a— you, you want it to be like the Posturepedic mattress or the pillow or the, you know, pick your, pick your thing. That's what people expect and that's our job to deliver.

Well, why don't I kick it back on you? What have you learned on 1,700 nights already? I mean, I'm curious, you know, is the data, we learning something new about sleep that we just didn't know or about people and their habits when they're for a third of their day?

I'd say the biggest thing we're learning, we're reminding of ourselves is, is how difficult diabetes is. And as we look at some of the data, sometimes we just want to pick up the phone and call that person. We don't know who they are, so we can't call them. But nonetheless, you see 001-7, you just go, oh, man, can I help this person? What can we do? Because as much as we know we're not developing this product for ourselves, when you see the real world and you see what people are really dealing with and how they're living their lives and how difficult diabetes is for them, it hurts to see it sometimes. And so it's just a real reminder that we're working for a lot more people that don't have access to the tools and the tech that we're fortunate to have access to, you know, in our journey. And it really reminds you of, of, of why this is so important.

I think some of the other learnings we had was, you know, in our own lives, whether it's my child or John or Sean and living with this disease, you have your own strategies and you develop tools as to, you know, if you're fearful of going hypoglycemic at night, you have one strategy. If you're trying to maintain your time in range, you have other strategies. And we thought we understood them. And we did some market research. I mean, people wrote in hundreds of entries as to what they particularly do to manage nighttime. These are pen users, not the automated insulin delivery system 24/7. These pen users, and that really rings home. It's like our job is to, you know, John and I have this debate, you know, every night you're putting this device on, are we asking you to do one more thing? At some level, yes. I argue that we're asking you to do many less things because of all these things you were doing before and the cognitive burden that John referred to earlier. We hope to let that fade into the background. We hope you don't have to eat an extra carb before you go to sleep because you're afraid of going low. We don't want you to wake up in the middle of the night and set an alarm just to test your blood glucose to make sure you're in range. We're trying to take away those things. And so There's a lot of learnings that people, and John pointed out that, you know, you feel sorry for these people and the struggles and you identify with that struggles. And then there's countless others who are doing all kinds of things that we don't know about, but that impact their lives, their sleep, their quality of life. And it's those types of things, those learnings, it drives home why we're doing what we're doing in terms of the impact on people that we have the opportunity to make.

100%. The impact part, how do you— back to you, John B. How do you build the trust with someone when it is like what John S. mentioned, kind of that intimate time at night sleep? Like, what do you think has to happen for the pen user who probably has tried a lot of solutions before and tried a lot of manual things? What do you think trust is like?

I think you build trust through consistency. I think you build trust through a seamless experience, but I also think you build trust through expectations and, you know, having people understand diabetes is a journey. This is not a silver bullet and a panacea that's going to solve their lives immediately upon putting it on. And I think it's our job to bring people along to understand the power of what we're doing, how it works, and get them comfortable taking baby steps. The good news is you don't have to be tethered 24/7. You don't have to make this big commitment like you do with these other devices. You can try it out at night and you can start to understand it and you can take baby steps to trusting us that we're right. But that takes time. It's not— I can't just tell you, trust me, right? We've got to deliver it in the experience and they've got to see it. And the first time, the second time, the third time they wake up in range and see the power of this is John alluded to his own experience when he built a system, he woke up, it's like, oh my God, this is amazing. That's our hope, that we're surprising and delighting each and every day and people wake up and it becomes reinforcing that they can trust Luna to take care of them and they can just go to sleep and they don't have to think about it, at least for that time while they're sleeping.

John, as to you, what has to change, what adoption-wise to the doctors, the clinics, all that, how do they come on board with this as well too?

Look, it's hard. I mean, just getting a mindshare is hard. And, and, you know, something as John, John B. has alluded to a couple of times, we just did this, this big market research project to really understand our customers and really understand where we're going. And one thing that stood out remarkable, remarkably in a big way was just as you We did a study with patients and we did a study with clinicians. And the difference between what patients report as their most important issues to solve, the biggest challenges that they're having versus what the clinicians thought or how they rated the same thing was pretty mind-blowing.

Wow.

And so it just tells you that, you know, in this space there's people have people are solving different things. The clinician is solving a different problem and they're incentivized to solve something versus the patient is trying to solve something else. And so, so that creates opportunity, but also creates a lot of challenges as we're thinking about how to get out there. And, and, you know, like, you know, when— from my previous company, I come from web, I come from digital, I come from digital advertising. And so we thought, oh, these, you know, dinosaur medical device companies. We're gonna, we're gonna go do digital marketing and performance marketing before people were calling it that. And we're gonna take over. And, but what we learned was that people aren't searching for this online. People aren't interacting for this online. And it was hard to get people, you know, we had the budget to go spend, but we couldn't spend enough or we couldn't spend effectively because people aren't searching for it. They just want this stuff to go to the background. They want to focus on their work and their kids and their lives and their dating and their hobbies. They don't want to focus on a chronic disease. They want that to go to the background. And that's our job.

It is a job. And you're doing a good job at it. And you raised recently some new capital because of the technical milestones you guys got and because of the next hurdles ahead. Like, take us through a little bit of what the fundraise has enabled and where, you know, kind of in the short term you're headed through the trials that you're talking about?

Or so one of the things we think a lot about is capital efficiency. You know, this was not a word that people would utter 5, 6 years ago, you know, 2020, 2021. Prior to that, people would spend at all costs, go big or go home sort of approach. And we vowed to do it differently than we've done previously in some of our previous experiences. And so, first and foremost, obviously with Interlock's support as well, we were really in a capital efficient way, went from a standing start to first in human data with about $10 million, which is kind of unheard of in this space. And as we were able to prove, hey, we're right, we've got something, we've got a form factor, it works, the algorithm works, it was time to raise the next round of capital, which we closed last summer., and that enables us to conduct these clinical studies to get FDA clearance. Um, and so we're on the path to, as we mentioned before, the two feasibility studies that, that puts us on the path. So we raised about $20 million, about $24 million in the company's history. Uh, we're out raising a $30 million round. Um, to give you a sense of our capital consumption, the average for getting an automated insulin delivery system to market is about $200 million. And I don't think that includes Invecta, who spent $400 million and never launched a product. If we're right, we're on track to spend about $40 million to get this product to market, which allows us both from a cost profile to make this affordable and accessible. That was certainly ingrained in our mission as well, which is This is a great solution, but if it only works for a handful of people, then it's not a great solution, right? It's got to work for everybody. It's got to be accessible. And so we're very proud of the support we got from Capital. It enables us to do what we're doing. And we're out raising around. So if any of the listeners want to participate, we welcome the call. It takes a village. And so we're out there looking for support for our next round.

Amazing. Well, I'm excited to put the patch on me again when I can. I know I tried one of the very first just physical prototypes, no glucose in that one. And now that I'm on the—

No needle, no insulin.

True. Now that I'm on the carnivore diet, like hopefully, hopefully, you know, none of that needed anyway. But still, a lot of people I'm sure are pent up and ready to try this and, and excited for you guys to continue pushing forward. So thank you. For the work there so that they can eat a good healthy taco meal or non-healthy also, what we like about tacos as well. Where, where do you guys break bread, break tacos when you are either together or separately on your own? John S., kick us off.

Neal, I'm scared to reveal my cards on this one because I consider it my secret spot. And so I want these guys to be successful But man, I like it. It's my secret spot. It's called the Craft Taco. It's in Sorento Valley. It's walking distance from our office. And it's the place I bring visitors. And it's also the place when I forget to eat lunch, I go because it's the closest we got. But it's real good. The Craft Taco.

Yeah, you got to help them out with a shout out at least. But I understand. This is San Diego. We all have our secret surf spots or secret parking spots. I get it. The Craft Taco, uh, is this the one that's in parking lot of what was Tandem Daisies? No, different spot.

That's City Tacos, which is also really, really good. But these guys are right— there's a New English Brewery, which is— this is their neighbor, and it's, it's— you don't see it from the street, it's kind of hidden. That's what makes it a secret spot. But they've got, uh, their bulgogi taco is real good.

Sold. Okay. Across the street from you. So I know what we're doing soon for sure. John B., where do you go? Where do you talk? East Coast.

So I'm going to go the opposite direction. I'm going to go a little more upscale because I like to go there any time I can. And in fact, John, we're going to go there in 2 weeks, which is Reposado in downtown Palo Alto. Not only have phenomenal tacos, but the chips are top of the list as well. But, uh, it's, uh, it's my go-to place when I can get out there.

Okay, putting on the database two new entries, two new spots that have not been mentioned on the show before. I knew I could, uh, call on you guys to give us the hidden gems for sure. Uh, this is great, guys. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the time, but even more thanks for honestly a lifetime dedication to solving the problems that millions of people have. You know, I know it's personal, uh, which helps with the powering forward every day for 20 years, right? Or whatever it takes. But still, just knowing that you're going to help people have a good night's sleep— God, that's got to feel good and empowering coming up here soon. So thanks, and I look forward to having tacos with you guys soon. Cheers.

Thanks, Neal. Thanks.

Thank you.

The party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech. You know we got it. Tacos and tech is on smash for the green. Guacamole, keeper, captains counting beans. Contador cuentan frijoles. Founders trying to raise some queso. La vida San Diego. School of Rappi rapping fire. Tortillas round jalapeños in these modern times. A craft beer and coffee. My coding yoga passy. Body origami. We be surfing Coronado, eating tacos El Gordo, the tacos ten en puesto, lucha libre, and sombrero. Gotta shout out Tech Coast Angels by the ocean, watch the sunset, La Jolla shores, entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer. Oceanside to Tijuana, SD be full of hustlers, from couch surfing to penthouses, Houses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interviewin' founders who be shootin' for the moon. #SDTacos with your host Neal Bloom. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech. Tacos n' Tech! You know we got it— ay! Startups get the party started... startups get the party started... startups get the party started... you want tech and tacos? Tacos n' Tech! You know we got it— ey!

Hey hey heyyy! Haha. Yeah!