In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Laurence Girard, CEO and founder of Fruit Street and managing director of Hippocrates Ventures. Girard shares the story of his first startup’s failure after a $1 million raise and how he pivoted to launch Fruit Street, a digital diabetes prevention program that delivers 22 video‑based classes, a wireless scale, Fitbit, and a mobile app to help pre‑diabetic individuals lose weight and avoid type 2 diabetes. He explains the public‑health significance of pre‑diabetes (affecting 86 million Americans) and how Fruit Street’s program aligns with the YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program. Girard details his unconventional fundraising approach: recruiting 250 physician investors through equity crowdfunding, positioning Fruit Street as a public‑benefit corporation focused on social impact rather than pure financial returns. He emphasizes the importance of resilience, ethical treatment of early investors, and the future of physician‑driven crowdfunding. The conversation also covers practical advice on email etiquette, the value of concise communication, work‑life balance, and the need for rest, referencing Arianna Huffington’s book Rest. Girard shares favorite motivational quotes about moonshots and the power of small, committed groups to change the world. He concludes with contact information for Fruit Street and Hippocrates Ventures.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by WagsMedia. WagsMedia provides you with everything you need to generate more customers and grow your brand. Head on over to wagsmedia.com, W-A-G-S-M-E-D-I-A dot com, to enter a contest where you can win a free, done-for-you custom website valued at $2,500 for a limited time only. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Lawrence Girard with us. He's the CEO and founder of Fruit Street, which delivers a digital diabetes prevention program. He is also the managing director and founder of Hippocrates Propertys Ventures, the first physician-funded digital therapeutics venture capital fund. So welcome to the show, man.
Thanks for having me.
Of course, grateful to have you here, man. Um, we'll jump into the first one. The first question I have for you, Lawrence, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Well, I would say that I had a previous version of my startup where I had raised about $1 million of funding that ultimately failed because we had outsourced the software development to the Philippines, but we also just didn't have reimbursement from the health plans at the time. And so when that company failed, I had two choices, which was to basically go back to college or to just keep going. And so I decided to keep going and started Fruit Street immediately afterwards and offered all the old investors free shares in the new company. To be ethical and make sure they got a return on investment. And now we've been working on it for over 4 years since that happened in May of 2014. And Fruit Street's very successful now, having raised over $10 million from 250 physician investors and delivering our digital diabetes prevention program to commercial health plans and having a real medical product that's having a, a social impact. So I think that The lesson is sometimes founders give up too easily when their startup looks like it's failing. Um, the only way that a startup can really fail is if people stop working on it. So I would say that resiliency is a, a very important trait for entrepreneurs to have, and sometimes they give up right before they're about to actually be successful.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Well, I mean, Fruit Street's addressing a pretty big public health problem that most people don't know about, which is this issue of prediabetes, which means that a person has elevated blood glucose levels and they're at a high risk for developing type 2 diabetes. And so the YMCA had conducted clinical research on a program called the Diabetes Prevention Program, which is basically a one-year-long diet and lifestyle intervention designed to help prediabetic individuals lose 5 to 7% of their weight to reduce their risk for type 2 diabetes. And so the structure of our program is basically, you know, 22 one-hour-long classes through video conferencing with a registered dietitian. You're provided with a free wireless scale, a Fitbit, and you can take pictures of your food in our mobile application. And the goal is to really help people lose weight and improve their lifestyle through this program so that they do not ever have to deal with type 2 diabetes. There's again, 86 million people who have prediabetes. It's actually 1 out of 3 Americans. So it's probable that many people even listening to this podcast could be at risk. And so if you want to take a 1-minute risk quiz, you can just go to the website fruitstreet.com and see if you're at risk for the program. And even if your health insurance pays for that. That would be one thing. I mean, I can certainly share a little bit about our physician fundraising, which a lot of people think I'm an expert in as well, this kind of like equity fundraising as well. But I always like to start with the actual product first.
Yeah, no, go for it. I'm actually— that was one thing that I was curious about too, because it's like you seem to be— well, not seem to be, you obviously are like very good at getting funding for things. So I'm I'm curious how you did that, especially the first time because it was quote unquote like a failure, but then you still were able to get, you said up to $10 million of funding for this next one. So if you can dive a little bit into that.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of first-time entrepreneurs think that everything that's successful is funded by the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and that's simply not true. Many of those firms are very unsuccessful, in fact. In providing returns to investors. So when I started ThruStreet, I thought, well, what if we made it more of a grassroots movement of physicians that want to improve healthcare with technology, but then those physicians could also serve as advisors and kind of like a medical think tank where they could really help us grow the business. And there's a saying which is that if you ask for money, you get advice, and if you ask for advice, you get money. And so we have both great investors and advisors, and basically we've done you know, social media advertising to physicians to recruit them as investors and advisors. And the reason why they're investing is not just because it's a good investment, but because we're having a social impact. In fact, Fruit Street's a public benefit corporation, which means that we are a for-profit company, but we write our social mission into our bylaws, which is to prevent and treat lifestyle-related disease using telemedicine, wearable devices, and mobile applications. And I think often founders try to pitch the investors on the financial returns when really they should be pitching them on the social impact that might be relevant. I mean, the physicians that invested in Truth Street see patients every day that could benefit from this technology. And so I think that equity crowdfunding is kind of the future, having a bunch of investors giving you between $25,000 and $100,000 each rather than one venture capital firm. I mean, we'll probably end up having 500 physicians that invest $50,000 each and we'll have raised $25 million of funding. And then yeah, eventually we might have an institutional investor, but I don't think that's necessary unless you're doing something like you're building cars or you're launching a rocket into space. But for like a software-based company, you can probably do equity crowdfunding quite successfully as well.
Got it, okay. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Don't send emails late at night and also send shorter emails.
Dude, I love both of those pieces of advice, man. Dude, sometimes I'll get emails from people and I've actually, like two things I'll do. If I get an email that's like really long, like it could literally be put into like a book, like it could be its own book, is I just like, I'm like, okay, just schedule a 10-minute call with me or Secondly, like, let's just simplify this, you know what I mean? Like, what is the actual point?
Yeah, I was listening to the CEO of Basecamp talk on a podcast, and he said that if he was a teacher, he would want to do an English assignment where you have to write like a 5-page paper, a 3-page paper, a 1-page paper, a 1-paragraph paper, and then a 1-sentence paper so that you learn how to say the same thing in less words. But if you think about the way that schools are structured, you never really get a chance to revise, you know, papers that you submit. But really, in the business world, that's how things work. It's this iterative process, and I think that would be a good exercise for people to practice.
Yes, dude, could not agree more, man. Simplification, please. My inbox is saying please, man. So the next one is, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Well, um, I think it's different for every person. Um, I think that a lot of founders make the mistake of making the key to happiness their startup, and their identity becomes their startup. So for entrepreneurs, I think that they have to have a balance between, okay, they have their startup, but then they have their family, then they have their health, their education, their personal development. And I was using an analogy the other day, which is that I think a lot of startup founders think of their life as like a train, and their startups and their company is like the engine pulling the whole train. And then like on that train, you have like your family, your school, your life, your health, right? And like your startup's just like pulling everything. And so if the startup crashes, their whole life is just like burned to the ground. But it's really that you should really structure it where like there's 5 different trains, right? There's like your life, your education, your family, your health, all those other things. And I think that a lot of founders get too singularly focused on their startup where in the last 25 years startups have become like such a romantic idea, like we're going to change the world. But like really they're just businesses and people have been starting businesses for 5,000 years, right? Or if not longer, right? So I think you have to have some perspective and separation. And those are kind of like my categories. It's like, okay, yes, I want my business to be successful and have a social impact. But also, if you don't have health, you really don't have anything. And then you also want to have family and friends as well. So that's kind of how I look at it.
And what is the best book that you've read? And what was the number one thing you learned from that?
There's one book I read recently called "Rest" by Arianna Huffington that's about the science of rest. And, you know, our culture has become very obsessed with working, and it's almost like a masculine thing now to like not sleep and stuff like that, right? But it talks about how like many of the most famous people in the world, they would only work like 4 to 6 hours a day, and they would only work for 90 minutes to 2 hours at a time and then they would take long breaks. So I think that the whole structure of like working from 9 to 6 is just kind of broken basically. And a lot of people in startup land undervalue the value of reps and even the ideas that come to them when they're not working basically.
Hmm, dude, I'm actually really glad I just heard that. So 4 to 6 hours a day, huh?
Wow, that's— Yeah, I mean, think about you go to the office, right? I mean, think about the number of hours that you're basically doing nothing or you're at your computer and you're looking at 90 notifications come in where you really should just turn everything off and just do one thing at a time, right?
For sure. Yeah, it is interesting. I think we are in a time right now where it's like we could be at the office from 9 to 6, but you're right, 3 of those, 4 of those hours could be the texting, the calls, the FaceTime, and none of it's actually due to the task or pointed towards the task at hand. But it feels like work because it's like so intertwined with our work.
Right.
Interesting. And the next one is, what's your favorite quote and why?
I have so many, I have to think for a second. I mean, I like the quote, if you shoot for the moon and miss, you land among the stars. Although I always thought that it should really be, if you shoot for the stars and miss, you land among the moon, because you can't really land among stars. But I also like It's Moon's speech, you know, where he talks about like, you know, we don't do things because they're easy, but because they're hard, you know, and I think I'm part of something called Startup House where they have that philosophy of having like a moonshot vision where, you know, what does the world look like in 25 years because your startup exists in? And I guess let's share one last one, which is, I always forget the exact name of the person that said this, but basically like, you know, People underestimate that a small group of committed citizens that have particular beliefs can't change the world, but really, that's what startups are, right? It's a small group of people that really believe in an idea. Even getting back to the Declaration of Independence, a small group of people that had a big impact. So I like that kind of quotes and thinking.
Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last one I have for you before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?
Yeah, they can email me at laurence.girard@fruitstreet.com. So it's L-A-U-R-E-N-C-E dot Girard, G-I-R-A-R-D, at fruitstreet.com. And visit our website, fruitstreet.com, or for Hippocrates, it's hippocratesvc.com.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for hopping on.
Thank you.
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