Daniel (4:25)

Wow.

Host of Founder Story (4:25)

I have to say I never ever talk about this, but when I was a teenager, I was diagnosed with ocd and I think I've told it to two people, three people maybe in my life. I've never publicly said it, but, but I can really appreciate what you're doing. And I have gone through coping mechanisms of alcohol when I was younger as well. So I am very excited about what you're doing and a lot of people really need this because it can be a big struggle. So you've helped over 3 million people. That's insane. That's amazing. What have people told you about and what's the feedback that you've been getting from people?

Vedant Pradeep (5:08)

So, I mean, we've heard a lot of things from people I think, like, primarily it says, I mean, there have been, there have been, you know, people from all sides, right? Like, I mean, people who have. Who drink like seven drinks a week. And when I cut back to one and they've succeeded. And we've also had people on the other side of the spectrum. They've, you know, they've been to recovery centers, they've been to all these other places and they were like, reframe is a godsend. I mean, only when I found reframe did I actually. Was I actually able to cut back. And the reason is we don't. We don't actually engage in judgment. We don't believe in like just setting restrictions. Like, if I tell you, hey, just drink one drink, you might, you might not succeed. I don't know. But I know this. It's not sustainable because we're not solving the core issue. And reframe like focuses really hard on solving the core issue. And one thing that I didn't appreciate as well as much early on because I kind of thought of this as like a single player mode. And it wasn't, was the power of the community. And we built a community within frame. It was supposed to be like kind of in it early on, to be candid, it was more like, okay, it was a checkbox. It was a nice idea. I didn't really think much of it. Turns out community became the most powerful thing. Like, we now have the world's largest community of people that are trying to cut back. And it is amazing, right? People support one another and it's really powerful when you see someone else who's going through the same journey as you, like seeing their wins, seeing their struggles, and having them support and cheer you on, it is something else. What we realized is there are like hundreds of in person meetings around the world every single week through reframe that I. That I did not expect. And I think, yeah, and I guess like the one. There's. Whenever somebody asks, ask me about this, there's always this one experience that I go back to because that was like, I don't know, it was life changing for me, I think. So I was doing this event here in Atlanta, so I rarely do these kinds of in person, like events. And, and after this event, there was. There was this, this, this young man that, you know, that she sat on the first row. He was like listening all throughout. After I was done, he's like, hey, can I have a selfie? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm not like a celeb. Or anything. He's like, no, but I drove four and a half hours to. To come see you. And I'm like, but why? And he's like, because you saved my brother's life. He was like, in a downward spiral. And then after frame, he's like something completely different. And that was like, you know, we worked so hard, and that's the kind of thing that. That. That really keeps us going. And we are just fortunate that we've been able to do that with millions of people.

Host of Founder Story (7:50)

Yeah, I think we. You start a company hoping it's going to be one thing thinking your customers will be a. And then you realize that, you know, your customers are actually def. Or they benefit way more than the. A customer, whoever you thought it was going to be. And I can imagine there's nothing more gratifying than somebody coming to you saying that whatever your product or service is, help save a family member's life. That is incredible. So how has that journey been going along, knowing that your original person of who you were thinking about is now changing? And on top of that, this whole movement of, you know, dry January or, you know, whatever it is, there's. There's this big movement of. Of going more alcohol free?

Vedant Pradeep (8:39)

No, absolutely. I mean, I think what is interesting is, I mean, when we took the initial pivot, we didn't quite expect it to turn out the way that it did, but it actually kind of came to the exact perfect audience that we were looking for too, because what ended up happening was more than 90% of people on reframe are trying to cut back because they want to get help healthier. They're not necessarily physically addicted to alcohol. They just want to lead a healthier life. And what is interesting is, I mean, that's exactly the same goal. I mean, we want to help people break bad habits, we want to help people build great habits. We want to help people manage their emotions. That is how you sustainably cut back on alcohol. And if you stretch that all the way to the right, that's also how you get peak human condition, because I'm so. You work on your nutrition, you work on your fitness, you manage your emotions. That's the pathway to peak a human condition. Interestingly, we kind of somehow found our way back to the original path. I can't tell you that it's by design, because it was not entirely by design. It was like we had this initial idea in mind that we were really excited about. Then we kind of went into a space that we thought there was a real problem that needed solving and it kind of came back in a way that we didn't quite anticipate. And we've been very fortunate.

Host of Founder Story (10:02)

I really like the community piece where you didn't know that the organic community, a community, was going to form from your service without you even pushing it to happen. And it became a major part of it. I think a lot of founders, no matter what service or product that they have, this could be something major. Can you dive into what is this neuroscience backed alcohol reduction program you mentioned a little bit in the beginning. Can you tell me more about what that is?

Vedant Pradeep (10:34)

Of course. And I just want to touch on the community piece, which is like really interesting. So the only thing is, I mean, you have to be open to feedback and the way that when people give you, you have to take it. And we did that. But I would say like it kind of thrived in spite of. In spite of us early on versus because of us, because we didn't actually like invest as much in it. And then we kind of heard, we saw what was going on and then we went all in. And that really helped. Yeah. Now coming back to the neuroscience based program, so the reality is, I mean, it's. So there are these negative thinking patterns and like, you know, associations that you have with alcohol that needs to be broken.

Daniel (11:19)

Right?

Vedant Pradeep (11:19)

Like you need to, to be able to sustainably cut back, you need to just change the way that you think about alcohol in the first place. But you also have to identify, like, what are your triggers? Why are you drinking in the first place? What is it that you're trying to mask? And once we figure that out, we need to come up with strategies and not just like just throwing strategies and then like, hey, here's like 20 different strategies. Just pick one that doesn't happen because people don't work that way. We need to figure out what actually works for you and help you bring that into your life and then teach you all these different techniques. I mean, what, like, you know, I mentioned triggers. I mean, what is your primary trigger? How do you deal with that trigger? When. When the craving arises? How do you deal with cravings? So our program kind of dives into all these different things. Initially it was 160 day program to help you cut back on alcohol. Now we've got 100,270 or so days worth of programming because we realize that people don't just want to cut back, they want to like build healthier habits, they want to like improve their emotions. But one thing, something else that we realized was, you Know, you can't just dump everything on somebody. Like, you know, one of the reasons that people don't actually complete books is that it's a lot like you have to like, base yourself. You have to do all that. And that's a real problem. But with Reframe, what we've seen is, and we've gotten a lot better over time because we've had data from millions of people have been through the program. So we've been, uh. We are able to predict what kind of issues that you will run into and then give you the exact content that you need to like, solve those issues a good percentage of the time. And, and that makes it like, you know, feel a little prophetic. You're like, oh, on day 13, I'm going to get sugar cravings. So we give you content to help you with your sugar cravings. So we are very like, we try to like, create programs based on the problems that we anticipate you're going to face, when you're going to face them. And that bit is important because we could give you a technique and it might be completely useless for now, and you might be like, what is this? It doesn't apply to me. So it's super important that hits the right person at the right time. And that's another bit about the refrain program that makes it really powerful. And it's only like 10 minutes a day. We don't want to overload you with stuff because that doesn't help.

Host of Founder Story (13:37)

I like 10 minutes a day. I don't even read books because I know it's going to take me hours and I'll never finish it. And I'm going to be frustrated. But if I can do 10 minutes a day, I can do that. I. And it makes sense where this sort of the reframe or reframing your mind or your thoughts can be used for not just, you know, alcohol consumption, but you were talking about many sugar cravings or other things you could potentially be or it sounds like helping people for the rest of their life by leveraging and using this muscle that they're building by. By doing this every day. I know you have something that just launched today. It's called liquid luck. Can you tell me how this is a differentiator among other zero alcohol drinks?

Vedant Pradeep (14:27)

So what we wanted liquid luck to be is a functional beverage. So what we realized, I mean, is that people struggle with cravings. This is like a. You could, I mean, you really tap into willpower quite a lot to like, you know, to not give in to the cravings. So we were like, we wanted to one of our core missions early on. I mean we want to build an end to end lifestyle management system and we don't want to just tell people what to do. We want to make it so easy for people to do that. It becomes a no brainer. And when we kind of think along those lines, I mean if you've got cravings, we need to give people something to like combat cravings more effectively. And that's where the, the idea of Liquid Luck really originated from. Like, how can we like dampen someone's cravings? I mean, can we take away the thirst? So we added L glutamine in that has been shown in some studies to like to dampen alcohol cravings, among other things. And so we formulated in such a way that it tastes great because it shouldn't taste like medicine or whatever. Right, right. So it needs to taste good. So it tastes good. It functionally helps you like avoid and prevent cravings when you do have them. And, and it's also generally good for you. It, you know, what are all the needs that alcohol serves? I mean, that's where we like set our whiteboarding session essentially. Like, okay, it. People use it to de stress, people use it to fall asleep. People use it to like, you know, to like dampen anxiety a little bit. Uh, so, so we wanted to have some of those same effects through a drink that is actually healthy for you and not like, you know, through something that, that actually harms, harms you in the long run. And that's what Liquid Luck is formulated to be. Uh, we call it liquid luck and it's kind of like, you know, the, the little portion from Harry Potter where you're like, you take it and you just feel good, you feel lucky. Um, and that's kind of how we wanted this to feel. And it took almost an entire, entire year of formulation. Like an entire year of iteration. We were like really hard on this product. We were like, we don't want to launch this if this isn't great. So. And that kind of breaks all the rules that you kind of hear of in a startup where you kind of just put something out there. We were like, we already did that. We are really good at that. But with Liquid Lock, we really want it to be effective, we want it to taste great. And we are not going to make any compromises. This was something that we decided and every other week we had like products delivered to our door. Like, let's drink it. Like, I mean, is this, does this taste Good. Yes. No. Then does this actually work? And we've used it on ourselves, we've tried it ourselves, several oh so many different, so many rounds and now I think it's in a great place. The Comm skew for instance. It does make you feel incredibly calm and there are so many products that taste good that work is a placebo. This isn't one of them that I.

Host of Founder Story (17:19)

It makes total sense that you have your core company which is, you know, the app, and then when you want to bring in ancillary products or services on top of that, that is where you can take the time to ensure almost I'm using the word perfection, but at least you know, as perfect as you could possibly get it without rushing because you already had your court. I I do know a lot of companies that rush everything and I think over time, you know, you only get one shot.

Daniel (17:50)

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Host of Founder Story (21:46)

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Host of Founder Story (21:54)

If if you launch something and you rushed it and it's not good, customers are unhappy and they talk. It could totally, you know, have a long term negative effect on the company. So this is really, really great advice for other people at the same time. It sounds like an amazing product. I want to try it because I don't really drink much but I really would like to drink zero alcohol products and I have seen many of them don't taste great. So I'm excited that it launches today which is amazing so people want to get in touch with you, they want to try the product, and they want to find out about the launch that happens today, which is, thank you for doing it. We've never done a launch same day, by the way, so this is a first. But how can, how can people buy it and get in touch with you?

Vedant Pradeep (22:39)

So, yeah, they can go to joinreframeapp.com and they'll find Liquid Luck there or download the Reframe app. I mean, you get special discounts on Liquid Lock amongst a whole bunch of other things that, that we have in the app. And also, like I always say, you're one shake away. Like, in refrain, we have this thing, like, we need to be as close to the customer as you possibly can. And one of the features we have on the app is you literally, like, take your phone, you shake it with the app on, and you have like this, this pop up, like you can reach out for customer service. And it's a good chance that I'm going to be seeing it because, like, I'm, I'm in the customer service channels all the time. So, yeah, I mean, we are like, literally one shake away.

Host of Founder Story (23:22)

One shake away. You're super involved. I can tell you're very passionate. This is a business that is really impacting, already impacted 3 million people directly. I'm sure it's millions more when you count their family members and their friends and other people that they also interact with. So I can't wait. You got to come back in a month, few months, tell us how the launch goes. This sounds super exciting. I can't wait to, to try everything myself. But thank you so much for what you do. Again, I have personal experiences with this, so I am very appreciative and I understand how difficult it can be.

Daniel (24:01)

And thank you so much for joining.

Host of Founder Story (24:02)

Us today on Founders Story.

Vedant Pradeep (24:04)

No, thank you so much for having me. Everyone's talking about AI these days, right? This season on Compiler, we're diving deep into how AI is reshaping the world we live in. Join us for a new season of Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat. Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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