← The Neuro Experience
Loading summary
Transcript75 lines
- [00:00]
Nick
50 years ago, type 2 diabetes for a child just didn't exist and today they are. 70% of what kids eat today is ultra processed food. Today we have a regulatory scheme where companies are allowed to self certify ingredients recognized as safe. Many of these ingredients have not been re reviewed in decades.
- [00:16]
Louise Nicola
That's wild.
- [00:17]
Nick
It really is wild. In many ways I think the system is rigged. The EU literally bans thousands of ingredients and additives shouldn't be in food for any reason and yet are allowed in the US and have been again for decades.
- [00:29]
Louise Nicola
This is like one of the biggest regulatory failures in America. I really want you to like hone in. Is there any like food category that you can name for me?
- [00:36]
Nick
So dyes, there's all sorts of synthetic dyes that have evidence of hormone disruption, carcinogenic impact. I think another one is preservatives. 90 some percent of them you can't pronounce anyway. There's one thing that will spike your blood sugar more than sugar and that's high fructose corn syrup. Why do we have high fructose corn syrup in the United States where, you know, basically nowhere else in the world is it used in such a widespread way? Well, the answer is corn lobby. And really the terrifying thing is.
- [01:00]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Hi, I'm Louise Nicola and this is the Neuro Experience.
- [01:06]
Louise Nicola
Nick, welcome to the show.
- [01:07]
Nick
Thanks for having me.
- [01:08]
Louise Nicola
Where are you joining from?
- [01:09]
Nick
I'm in Los Angeles, California at the Thrive headquarters.
- [01:12]
Louise Nicola
So Thrive headquarters is in la. Has it always been there?
- [01:15]
Nick
Always been in la, Always been in la.
- [01:18]
Louise Nicola
I want to get right into it because you've got an interesting journey. In 2014 you saw something that Whole Foods, Amazon, major groceries missed. That was healthy food was an infrastructure problem, not a preference problem. So as I was doing like the deep analysis on Thrive market because I'm absolutely obsessed with it, I want you to walk me through what your brain was actually doing when you identified this gap.
- [01:43]
Nick
Yeah, honestly I, I lived that gap growing up, you know, middle class, Midwest, grew up outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota and basically just saw how hard my mom had to work to find healthy options. And you know, the barriers were multiple. One was price organic prices were, you know, 25 to 50% premium. Another was geography. And you know, you look at it today and still over 50% of Americans don't live within driving distance of a healthy food store, healthy grocery store. So I saw those barriers as a kid and you know, fast forward 20 years, 2014, I'd sold my first company and was sort of staggered to see that those barriers still existed. And at that time, I was in la, where there's, you know, Erewhon on the corner, Whole Foods down the block, and all these options. And it was just such a stark contrast. When I go back to my hometown and see, you know, the options that I think most Americans face versus the options that are in some of the places that are more affluent, that are more. More urban, more dense on the coast. And so our whole mission was, let's make it accessible. And the insight was, healthy living is hard. It shouldn't be. You know, the size of your wallet, the zip code of your home should not determine whether you can get healthy food. And I think there's a really common misconception that, you know, the issue that faces people in terms of getting healthy is willpower or desire. And that's just not true for most people. I think most families want to get healthier. Most parents want better options for their kids. Uh, and the reality is, and, you know, certainly was in 2014, that the barriers are very significant.
- [03:21]
Louise Nicola
And one thing that I. You mentioned ERA one, right. Who can afford to shop there? It's so funny. My mother, you know, from Australia, she came to visit me and I took her to era and she walked in and she thought she was buying a tote bag, right? They're like, do you want to, you know, do you want a tote bag with that? And she's like, yeah, cool, whatever. Now, by the way, take into consideration the American versus Australian dollar. And she walked out and she was beside herself. I said, what's the matter? Well, what did you buy? She this tote bag was $50. I said, what? I said, why did you purchase that? She said, I didn't know. And it just. Every time I go in there, I feel like I buy a few punnets of strawberries and. And a shake and I'm down $500. Why is the organic, healthy food so inaccessible? Why does it have to be this expensive?
- [04:08]
Nick
Yeah, I think it's. The answer is it doesn't. But that is what it's been historically. And Erewhon is obviously a very extreme example and not to hate on them. They obviously have a market and I think deliver a product that people go back to and really love. But the percentage of the American population that can afford an Erewhon is fractions of 1%. And you look at where they're located and they're going to be in a very small number of places. And even if you go to Whole Foods or you think about more. More national chains of healthy Grocers, they are not in every market. And again, I think a lot of people are surprised if you live in L. A or you live in San Francisco or you live in New York to hear that, you know, 50% of Americans literally are not even in driving distance. Even if they could afford the premium, they're not in driving distance of a healthy retailer. And so again, the barriers are multiple, right? It's geography. It is, it is price. And then I think increasingly it's also just intimidation and where do I start and how do I find the right options for me? And all of these things compound. If you're a busy parent living on a budget in a place where there's not a lot of access and you're trying to make healthy choices for your kids while also balancing a lot of other responsibilities. It could just be pretty overwhelming when
- [05:23]
Louise Nicola
you had that shift. I mean, your mother was going through, you know, fighting the food system in Minnesota, right? What was, what was happening at that time?
- [05:30]
Nick
I mean, honestly, I took for granted the, the hard work that she was doing as a kid because it was happening in the background. And you know, I didn't like, we would, we would drive to go, go to a retailer's further away. She would clip the coupons to find deals on organic, on organic products. She was doing her own research. This was like, you know, pre Internet or very early Internet and you know, making sure we didn't have any sugared soda, sugared cereal, no soda, which was, you know, at that time people drank soda at dinner and lunch. And so, you know, that was just the way our house was. It was only as I got a little older and we became the weird house that I'd go to a sleepover and see cabinets and their pantries and be like, whoa, Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Crisp. This is awesome. And didn't appreciate how much work went into it from my mom to make sure we weren't eating those things. And I think gradually, as I spent more time at other friends homes and just seeing the broader, the broader world, it was like, wow, you know, it is ultra processed pretty much everywhere. And again, I look at, looked at it in 2014, which was, you know, at that time I was in my late 20s, so, you know, 15, 20 years after my mom was dealing with this, growing up with us in the 90s and it was still really bad. And you look at the stats today, 10 years later and you know, Thrive has 1.7 million members and we're doing hundreds of millions in sales and yet 70% of what kids eat today is ultra processed food and 57% of what adults are consuming is ultra processed. And both of those numbers are too high. And you know, frankly it's a tragedy that kids who are setting their health templates, learning their health habits are the ones that are really suffering most because their parents don't have that access. And so yeah, for us it was always all about how do we make it easy, how do we make it simple, how do we give parents like my mom, who are, you know, all over the country trying to figure this thing out, the tools that they need to solve this problem.
- [07:34]
Louise Nicola
What's been the biggest thing that you've seen? So you started this from the ground up. What has anything really shocked you when starting it? Because if the statistics still are 70% of US children are still eating ultra processed foods, how, how do you feel like as a mission led company that you're going to move that from 70 to 60 to 50 and just keep going down?
- [07:57]
Nick
Yeah, the answer is it takes time. You know, there's 100 million plus US households. Grocery is a trillion dollar industry. So even as Thrive has scaled beyond many e commerce platforms, even as we have, you know, surpassed well over a million members, even as we approach a billion in sales, you know, I still describe our journey as kind of call it first out of the first inning, or maybe not first out, but certainly the first inning. And so we have a lot of work to do. And I think as a mission driven company, we're not thinking in terms of quarters or even years. It's really a decades long process. And of course we're always looking for ways that we can accelerate that. And I think the big insight for our business early on was membership. That membership model, modeled similar to a Costco $60 a year, enables our members to save 25 to 50% off of retail prices. What that means in many cases is that we can offer an organic, natural, better for you product at or below the price of conventional equivalents. And that breaks down that first barrier price. You know, being online native, using e commerce from day one. You know, we don't have a brick and mortar retail infrastructure. We've got a back end warehouse infrastructure, more than a million square feet of warehouse space that holds all of our products. But we're able to ship literally out of those three, three buildings anywhere in the country and reach 95% of Americans in two days or less. So, you know, we're systematically breaking down those barriers. And I think one of the exciting things today is that AI is allowing us to really go after that third barrier I described, which is the intimidation factor, the overwhelm. The question, where do I start? The question of, you know, all right, something might be healthy in general, but is this healthy for me?
- [09:35]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Or.
- [09:36]
Nick
Or I just started a GLP1 and I don't know where to, where to go, or I just found out my child has a nut allergy or a lactose intolerance, like, what does that even mean? And how do I shop? And so, you know, more and more we're able to create a really purpose built experience for our members where they can come in and may not even know what products they want to buy, but know what their health goals are, communicate those health goals in the onboarding process and then have items that are recommended for them based on their dietary needs, based on what they're trying to achieve, based on their family. And, and that's been one of the most magical experience over the last year is to see, you know, over half of the items that our members are now purchasing on first order are coming from our AI which can, you know, harness the data.
- [10:18]
Louise Nicola
Wow.
- [10:19]
Nick
Exactly. Harness the data of our 1.7 million existing members to now make a better experience for every new member who's coming on.
- [10:26]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
I need to talk to you about Mitopure because if you listened to the episode last week, you will know that one of the most fascinating things about aging research right now is the role that mitochondria play in how we age. So these tiny little structures inside our cells are responsible for producing energy. And when they start to decline, everything from physical stamina to cognitive performance and diseases. I have been taking mitopure from Timeline. It's built around a compound called urolithin A. Now urolithin A, this is the only place you can get urolithin A. Helps your body recycle and renew damaged mitochondria so your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Now I'm four of the Timeline nutrition capsules. You can just go to timeline.com neuro you can search it all. But what I like to think about is this is not a stimulant or a quick fix. It's supporting energy at the cellular level, which is exactly what longevity science is. Now these are phenomenal. If you want 20% off, go to timeline.comneuro that's so interesting.
- [11:34]
Louise Nicola
I never thought about know AI in the aspect of, you know, helping you choose what you want when you're shopping for your food. Obviously we're seeing AI infrastructure just grow and skyrocket. Right now, I wonder what else is going to happen on the back end. Like when you think about AI and grocery stores, is it more? So are you doing it to not only educate but also choose the right products based on needs of the customer?
- [12:01]
Nick
Absolutely. And you know, through that process they, they get educated as a side benefit. But part of the benefit of the AI is that you don't need to come in with knowledge yourself of exactly how to implement your health goals as long as you know what you're trying to achieve. We can then take that information again, map it against the data that we have. Both, you know, stated preferences from other members, but also their revealed preferences through their purchasing behavior. And you know, that's now the really unique thing that Thrive Market has is this enormous data advantage where, you know, we have over a decade of history from, you know, million plus members who are going through and shopping searching for healthy products. And so every new member gets the benefit of every member who's gone before them. Their preferences are mapped against the preferences of others and then product recommendations are made based on that. And you know, the magical thing with AI is that it just gets smarter and smarter and smarter and those, those insights compound. And so, yeah, it's a really exciting moment where, you know, we're a decade into the business, we're at some meaningful scale, we've been profitable for three years. You know, we've achieved a lot that a lot of people at the beginning of the business didn't think we would and that, you know, folks thought wasn't achievable for a mission driven business. And yet I feel like it's really day one where we have this new technology that can break down this final barrier to healthy living. You know, we've broken down the barrier of price, we've broken down the barrier of geography. Now we can actually make the experience personalized and make it simple and easy. You know, we had a dream back at the beginning of the business. We called it, you know, we basically called it my aisle. So the idea was like, if you come onto Thrive, you should have your own personal aisle that is fully personalized to you. And we did the best we could with the tools we had. Now with AI, you know, we can actually have an AI Thrive guide, basically build the cart for you based on your health interests. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of, you know, challenges that are going to come from AI, but the ability to open up access even further unhealthy living is the big opportunity that we see and one that we think will happen really quickly and just be another accelerant for our business.
- [14:05]
Louise Nicola
I think the entire food industry now there is a big spotlight on it just given the current administration and how they're going about several things which we don't have to get into, whether you're for or against it. But I want to know what your take is on the current system. You know, the food system in America. Look, I'm from, as I mentioned you, I'm from Australia, my parents are from Cyprus in Europe. So very, very different systems there. Obviously I live in the US and now I am at the mercy of the current system. And look there's, I think that there's a lot of problems when we talk about farming and, and our crops and our infrastructure around that. I want to know A what your thoughts are and B how we can make this more sustainable and not even like taking thrive market into consideration. I'm talking about how can we systemically change this?
- [14:55]
Nick
Yeah, look, I think a lot of people are really upset and movements like Maha are a reflection of the frustration that ordinary people all over the country are feeling. And obviously Maha has become a political movement. But I think at a, at a really basic level what they're trying to say on food is not a political statement. It's just a statement of reality which is that as I said before, healthy living is hard and ultra processed foods are everywhere and good, healthy, nutritious foods are hard to find. And you know, in many ways I think the system is rigged against ordinary, ordinary folks. Some of those barriers I already described, it's price, it's geographical access. But I think there's also a real challenge in that, you know, when people go out there, every brand is trying to sell their products and the incentive of the brand is not to create the healthiest, best product for an individual's health or for a family's health or for kids health. The incentive of the brand is to sell more products. And you know, today we have a regulatory scheme in the FDA where companies are allowed to self certify ingredients under grasp, generally recognized as safe. Many of these ingredients have not been re reviewed in decades.
- [16:07]
Louise Nicola
Actually that was what I was going to ask about you. It's the. Let me just, I'm cutting you off. Just to give everybody a perspective. The grass system allows food manufacturers to self certify their own additives as safe. That's, that's wild.
- [16:22]
Nick
It really is wild and it's been the, the standard for decades in the US and it's, it is completely at odds with what the rest of the developed world has done. I mean, the EU literally bans thousands of products or thousands of ingredients and additives and preservatives and things that, you know, honestly shouldn't be in food for any reason and yet are allowed in the US and have been again for decades. And so, you know, the standard that we've taken at Thrive Market is one, let's take the highest standard in the world, which come from the EU as a starting point, but let's not stop there. We ban over a thousand ingredients. We have no synthetic dyes, no artificial preservatives. We basically want to be the place that you can go in the US where it's so difficult to trust that brands are telling the truth, where it's so difficult to know that your government is actually protecting you from. From unhealthy or unsafe products. And we want to be in a place that you can trust. So if you can't outsource your trust to the government, outsource your trust to a platform that's driven by a mission that's done, done the hard work that starts with the highest standards in the world, but then actually goes further. And, you know, that's something we're super proud of. And it's. It's part of the reason why, you know, most of our members are not only renewing, but also referring other members. And that's been a grassroots.
- [17:40]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Most people underestimate how much discomfort costs them, not just physically, but cognitively. And if something is pulling or shifting or distracting you all day, it actually takes attention away from where your attention should be. This is why I generally am surprised by Honeylove and they are the sponsors of today's episode. I didn't expect a bra or shapewear to actually change how I move through the day, but it does. The bras are supportive without underwire, which, if you've worn traditional ones, you know how rare that is. And shapewear is designed differently. It doesn't compress you into something that you're not. This bra shapes your body. It works with you. It works with how you move. And that's the whole point, because you don't need to keep adjusting this damn thing because the product has removed the friction. That means that you don't have to think about it. If you want to treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market, you can use my exclusive link and get 20% off honeylove@honeylove.com neuro that's honeylove.com neuro after you check out, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that the Neuro Experience podcast sent you.
- [18:55]
Louise Nicola
I really want to just keep on that because I think that this is like one of the biggest regulatory failures in America. I really want you to like hone in. Is there any like, food category that you can name for me where it just gives us an example of what's happening?
- [19:08]
Nick
Well, I think you can look at sort of ingredient categories. So dyes are one that the MAHA movement is really focused on and deserved at least.
- [19:16]
Louise Nicola
Like red dye.
- [19:17]
Nick
Yeah. There's all sorts of synthetic dyes that have evidence of hormone disruption, that have evidence of carcinogenic impact. You know, the evidence. There's also evidence that certain people are much more susceptible to the effects of. So while, you know, on a population level you may not see massive health impacts for certain individuals, there can be. And in spite of that research, which again, it's not, this isn't like bleeding edge new research. This is decades old research that's been corroborated, substantiated repeatedly. You know, we just haven't moved. And it's only now that you have grassroots movements and sort of a kind of a public interest campaign against some of this stuff that, that there's action being taken. I think another one is preservatives, right? And this is a classic example where the brand's incentive is to, you know, increase the shelf life of products. And if they can do that without it affecting taste, and if they can do that without people really knowing what those preservatives are and you know, 90 some percent of them you can't pronounce anyway and most people aren't reading the, the fine print, you know, they're going to do it. And if you have a regulatory scheme that allows that and that sort of defaults to safe until proven otherwise, it puts the burden of proof on the consumer. And, and so I think those are two categories that are really of ingredients that are really big. The category that I would say is probably most, most ripe with, with issues right now from a broader CPG side is just supplements.
- [20:43]
Louise Nicola
So highly unregulated.
- [20:45]
Nick
Exactly. And, but, but now more and more food is not that different than supplements, Right. Like most ultra processed food, it's the same thing, right. You're taking food like chemical ingredients and adding them together to create something that looks like food, tastes like food, we call it food, but actually, you know, it's got an ingredient deck that looks more like a just manufactured supplement. And so, you know, I think what there's, there's a lot that's kind of come under the banner of Maha. And certainly, you know, I don't personally and I don't think Thrive is in any way advocating for that full umbrella. But specifically when it comes to food, and specifically when it comes to pointing out the challenges of a system that has basically promoted ultra processed food and deregulated the safeguards that would, that would prevent ultra processed food from being over 50% of what people are consuming, that critique is really, really valid and it's honestly very overdue.
- [21:41]
Louise Nicola
Yeah, I think also the way that you're doing this, I'm guessing with all the products that you get, you're looking into where the manufactured kind of like a, a third party testing site really before you put them out.
- [21:56]
Nick
The way that we view our role is to do the job that the government is not doing and to even go beyond what the best governments in the world are doing. So what does that mean? That means that we have to not only set the standards, but we have to also enforce them. And that's, you know, going up the supply chain. It is actually auditing, actually like checking the manufacturers. And so it's not just having the standards, it's ensuring that those standards are actually being implemented. And one of the effects of that is that, you know, we can't be an everything store. If you're going to sell millions of products from, you know, hundreds of thousands of brands, there is no way to do that due diligence. And so our model is, let's be ultra curated, let's just focus on the products that are the, that are the best and, and let's have a deeper relationship with those brands where we can help to promote their, their, their mission driven products, but also, you know, do the, do the hard work to audit them and to make sure that their standards are really up to par.
- [22:50]
Louise Nicola
So your own branded products now account for 25% of your sales. Now you also said that you've built a $700 million business on a membership model. So, meaning you're not just curating against the food system system, you're manufacturing an alternative to it. What are the own brand like, how are you, how are you finding access to this and how are you creating your own branded products?
- [23:14]
Nick
Well, again we're starting with the problem which is that most food companies, their incentive is to drive margin, not to pursue a mission. And you know, what that means is that they are going to cut corners when they can. They are going to focus on optics as much and sometimes more than substance. And you know, the net result of that is for people, they can't trust what they see on a package. Whether something is healthy or not, it's going to make health claims on the package. And so I think you have consumers today that are very skeptical, that are very jaded and then in many cases overwhelmed and in some cases resigned to just buying things and assuming they're not going to be healthy. So the way that we approach our own brand is let's go out there and find what products aren't being created or aren't being created in the right way that consumers, that consumers want. And we can look at the data from our members, what are they searching for and not finding what are the products they're buying and they're not satisfied with. And then we just go upstream and we make those products ourselves. And again, having the trust of our members enables us then to launch those products and to get credit for the up leveling that we're having in their standards. And we now have hundreds of those products on site. It's less than 10% of the assortment, but they're punching way above their weight in terms of sales. And we sort of turned the traditional private label model on its head where traditional private label in a grocery store is similar product, probably slightly lower quality and a lower price, almost just kind of like pushing the incentives even more to the extreme. Our approach is let's up level on quality, let's solve problems that are coming from the focus on margin instead of mission and let's really create products that are new in market and uniquely healthy for our members.
- [24:52]
Louise Nicola
How does the membership model fit into this? Because I've never heard of. Is this something where you go on and. Well look, actually I can explain. For me, I have a membership with Thrive Market and I'm always getting the top range olive oil because I'm always using it. I love olive oil. I've around five or six different olive oils for all different purposes in this household. But I want to know like what was the introduction there? Because you don't usually see membership sites for food. Is this just so people can just without, you know, without going on there and spending time just, I could guess, get on there and just get it delivered at the same time every month.
- [25:31]
Nick
By the way, just to give a pitch for the olive oil. You can see the pictures, picture right behind me. That's our single sourced organic extra virgin olive oil. It's, you know, sustainable, it's regeneratively farmed It's a fourth generation farm that we work with in Crete, which is the oldest olive producing region in the world. It's an island in Greece. And it's just one example of the way that we will go and pursue the highest level quality and go all the way to the top of the supply chain. And so, you know, to go to the point of membership, that's what people are paying for when they, when they join and provide a membership. It is the highest quality curated and then it's the ability to buy the products at a lower cost. And so, you know, we take margin on membership, $60 a year. The average member makes back their membership fee in two purchases. And for us that enables us then to offer these products at better prices and aim to be at or below the price of conventional equivalent. It also allows us to fund our more mission centric programs. So for example, we give free memberships to low income families, to first responders, to military veterans, to teachers and to students. We have hundreds of thousands of, we call them GIVES members who are on platform. And in fact every new member who comes in, we will fund one new membership for a Gibbs member. And then we give our members the opportunity to donate a portion of their savings at every order to go to those Gibbs members as well. And so we see the membership, one, it's a business model and enables us to offer these products at better prices to our members. But two is a community where our paid members can support the GIVES members and we can have really an ecosystem that also supports the brands who are doing the right thing and, and then creates a durable business over time. So membership is really at the core of both our business success being able to be a profitable company in a low margin, challenging space, and the success of the mission which is making healthy living accessible to all.
- [27:25]
Louise Nicola
I want to still go back and talk about the health system, right, the American health system, because there is a lot of, a lot of things in the EU that are banned, but America permits them, Whether, whether we're talking about the food dyes or you know, whatever that might be. I want to know where you sit. Like what has the regulatory gap actually cost American health?
- [27:48]
Nick
I think it's, it's enormous and you can see it in health outcomes. You know, the United States is the richest country in the world and yet our health outcomes are not the best in the world. They're not even close. You can see it in the preponderance of metabolic syndromes which sit upstream of many other diseases, whether it's heart disease, Whether it's Alzheimer's and dementia, which we're now seeing, has a metabolic antecedents in many cases it's upstream of cancer. And in the United States, and this is a dubious honor, but we've led the way in all of these trends towards obesity, morbid obesity, earlier onset type 2 diabetes to the point that if you look at the, at the data, 50 years ago, type 2 diabetes was very rare. Type 2 diabetes under the age of 30 or 40 was extraordinarily. Type 2 diabetes for a child just didn't exist. It was like, you know, a child having atherosclerosis. It wasn't possible because the, the load of, you know, basically mostly sugar, but also some of the other things that interact with the way that the body metabolizes sugar just weren't in the diet. And today they are. And when you have 70% of calories for the average child coming from ultra processed food and you have again, systems like grass, which are basically incentivizing companies to push through ingredients that are good for their business but not good for health, you just have a recipe over decades for some really horrible outcomes. And I think, you know, the important thing to remember too is when, when I say 70% is the average, that's the average. There is a right tail of that bell curve of people that are consuming almost all of their calories from ultra processed food. And that's how you have teenagers who are having diabetes or being pre diabetic. You know, that's how you have the average American now effectively being, being obese. And yeah, I think there's one path to try to solve that is pharmacological. And we're obviously seeing a huge trend right now with GLP1s. And honestly at Thrive, we're seeing many GLP1 users want to come to Thrive to find healthier products products now that they have kind of the, the tailwind from those drugs. But at the end of the day, a pharmacological solution isn't, can't be the only part of the solution. If you're, you know, eating fewer calories but they're still ultra processed, you're still not going to be in good health. And so we've really tried to focus on again, how do you start with the EU standards which are the, the best in the world. Take those as a starting point, but then say where can we go? Where can we go further? Because the EU is not as distorted by commercial interests as the United States, but it still is to a degree. Right? And, and the science is still evolving. So what we tried to do is go closer to the bleeding edge, really be proactive on specific ingredients, really make sure that we're that place where, you know, if a product made it on thrive, that it is going to meet the highest standards possible. And, you know, that's meant in some cases turning down products that are very popular in the market. And I won't name names, but there's big brands that made a lot of health claims that we would never carry on thrive market because they don't meet our standards. And so it's, you know, it's a sacrifice to our, to our revenue in some cases, sacrifice to our margin in some cases. But it's, it's the right thing to do by the mission. And it's the reason ultimately that our members trust us.
- [31:06]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Okay, I want to give something to the men listening here or honestly to anyone who has a man in their life. Let me tell you something. We spend so much time thinking about what we put in our bodies, but mental health. Most men and women never think twice about what they're putting on their skin every single day. And a lot of those everyday products, I'm talking shampoos, body washes, contain ingredients linked to hormone disruption. This is why you or your man need to make the switch to Based Body Works. I actually introduced Based Body Works to somebody close to me, and the difference was immediate. First of all, let's talk about their shampoo. The shampoo from Based Body Works uses peppermint and argan oil. So the scalp feels clean without being stripped. And over time, the hair just looks healthier. No sulfates, no unnecessary chemicals, just ingredients that actually make sense. And you know what, guys? I know all of these products are usually made for women, but this one is made for men. So if the men in your life have been using the same products forever without thinking about what's in them and you're noticing those hormone changes in them, the easiest way to upgrade it is to change to Based Body Works. And if you want to, you can go to basedbodyworks.com use code neuro for 20% off. And guess what? They'll get a free toiletry bag when they buy a set.
- [32:30]
Nick
Come on.
- [32:31]
Louise Nicola
We all know that the men want
- [32:32]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
that, because confidence shouldn't come at a cost of your health.
- [32:35]
Louise Nicola
Was there anybody doing this prior to you doing it that caught your eye of inspiration? Like, I remember I moved here 10 years ago, and I'm not sure when Whole Foods started, but I remember I was thinking, wow, Whole Foods, like at the Time, it was very, it was still very expensive and some, some items are. But that's where you went to for your fresh food products. That's where we thought that that was the best available offerings that, that, you know, that society had, especially here in, in New York. How does it differ from a Whole Foods?
- [33:06]
Nick
Yeah, I mean, Whole Foods was very much an inspiration for, for us. They, they set the standards higher than any other retail before that retailer before them. You know, they grew a footprint that no other health food retailer ever had. They create a transparency in their supply chains and they did it over the course of decades. Right. They were kind of, I think the, the pioneers in the natural organic movement starting to move mainstream. The challenge that they had was that their, you know, their kind of business model required high prices to do all those things. They needed to have prices that were anywhere from 20 to 40 or 50% above conventional prices. What does that mean? That means that, you know, the majority of Americans can't afford their products to begin with. It means that the majority of markets can't support a Whole Foods. And today, you know, Whole foods has over 500 locations, but they're still not within driving distance for more than half of Americans. So that business model works. It's not as extreme as the Erewhon model, but it still is pretty rarefied error in terms of who can access them. And then the big thing that's changed obviously over the last few years is that Whole Foods is now owned by Amazon and they have begun to Amazonify as you'd expect. Right. Amazon has a different set of goals. They are trying to build the everything store. And so now you will find Honey Nut Cheerios in Whole Foods. You'll find more of this, you know, soda products in Whole Foods. And so I think it's not to take anything away from what Whole Foods did. I think they're pioneers in the space and inspirations for us. But you know, similar to the way that I describe the EU standards, our, our orientation has always been let's start with the best that's out there and then let's go further. And so, you know, let's start with the EU standards and go up from there. Let's start with what Whole Foods was doing, but let's make it more accessible. And you know, membership allowed us to do that. Being online and not having a brick and mortar infrastructure allowed us to do that. And then staying independent has allowed us to do that. Right. If we were owned by a company, a business that had other non mission driven motives, then you Know, we would look very different than we do today. And we've gone kind of the opposite direction. We've become. We became a B corp, we became a public benefit corporation. So our actual bylaws enforce and protect our mission. And setting ourselves up that way, continuing to be founder led more than a decade in, enables us to scale, to build profit, but also to do it in a way that's mission centric.
- [35:28]
Louise Nicola
Yeah. I think also when you look at it and you zoom out and look at it from a chronic disease perspective, and what we talk about a lot on TNE is the Alzheimer's disease epidemic, with 55 million people worldwide having the disease, the number is definitely going to double and triple by the year 2050. When you look at the statistics like, for example, the 2025 Framingham Heart Study found that every daily serving ultra processed foods raises risk of Alzheimer's disease by 13%, especially in midlife adults. And midlife is that, is that crazy period, especially for women, where they're seeing their estrogen drop, they're seeing their progesterone drop, they're seeing their stress levels increase, which obviously increases your risk of the top three chronic diseases, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. I think it's interesting to see a founder's perspective on how you are reducing the risk of chronic disease, but not through the traditional sense that we may be hearing of.
- [36:30]
Nick
Yeah, I think that, you know, we've talked about the food system, but we can maybe speak for a moment about the health healthcare system, which, you know, basically grew up in the 19th and early 20th century to treat infectious disease and was very effective at doing that. But.
- [36:46]
Louise Nicola
Well, because of antibiotics and penicillin and.
- [36:49]
Nick
But it's fundamentally reactive. Right. So infectious disease is something that you react to once you get it. Chronic disease is something that develops over time, and by the time it's acute, you know, by the time you have a heart attack, by the time you have actual cancer, by the time you're in, you know, like diagnosable Alzheimer's or dementia, it is very, very difficult to unwind what really amounts to decades of precursor pathology that's taking place. And I think the interesting thing, and really the terrifying thing, is that all these things are so correlated. You look at cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's, what's upstream of all of them, metabolic, you know, the number two, the number one risk factor for cancer is smoking, but the number two risk factor for cancer is obesity. You know, if you have a genetic predisposition to a lipoprotein profile, with say, LP being high or your APOB is high, that does increase your risk for heart disease. But it doesn't actually mean you'll get heart disease unless you have the presence of high blood pressure and inflammation. Well, those things are fundamentally driven by metabolic pathways. So, you know, I think not to be the hammer looking for nails, but we know that metabolism is upstream of just about everything going on in the body. And if it's not upstream, when you
- [38:17]
Louise Nicola
talk about metabolism and metabolic health, you're really talking about the state of the mitochondria.
- [38:22]
Nick
That's right. And you're talking about everything that's being done to produce energy in the body. And you know, if you're on a diet that forces energy from sugar and you know, has all of these other things that, that negatively impact the way that your metabolism will function or, or you know, drives inflammation in the body like this has downstream effects on all of these chronic diseases. And I think the, you know, the solution is not going to be the same as it was to treat infectious disease. And you know, hopefully that'll be another outcome of AI that we had the equivalent of penicillin for cancer. But until then, we have to be thinking about prevention. And prevention starts with lifestyle. And of the different lifestyle buckets you've got basically, you know, diet, exercise, sleep, or kind of core pillars. I think diet is the one where frankly, the modern world is most stacking the odds against people. And I think we have so much misconception. Again, I think that the idea that this is a willpower issue, that individuals are responsible for it, you know, that's a very small part of the picture, but the bigger part of the picture is that the environment has fundamentally changed. You know, people haven't gone to having less willpower today than they did 100 years ago, but their environment has made it a lot harder, a lot more tempting to consume ultra processed food. You know, it's not that people like sugar more today than they did 100 years ago. If anything, you know, the opposite is true because sugar is so much more plentiful. But we're, you know, consuming an order or orders of magnitude more, more, more glucose per year. So it's, it's a real challenge and it's a systemic challenge. And I think the question is, how are we going to solve that? And movements like Maha are saying, let's have the government regulate more my experiences. And I think the, you know, kind of the history tells us that the government reacts too slowly. Some people would like to say let's have the health care system change. Well, that's really going to happen slowly I think as well. Our approach at thrive is let's start with a very fundamental building block which is food, and let's make that accessible and draw on the fact that people have given a better option and if it is accessible, we'll actually choose that.
- [40:32]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Let's be clear. Most of the US population is deficient in one nutrient and that is magnesium. Guys, I have been traveling so much lately and the one thing getting me by is my magnesium. Bottom breakthrough from bio optimizers. One of the things that people don't realize is that magnesium is involved in hundreds of processes throughout the body, including those related to brain health, relaxation, recovery and sleep quality. The difference with this magnesium is that it's not just one form of magnesium. It is seven forms working together in a singular formula. And bio optimizers isn't just some trendy company. They're formulated by PhDs backed by decades of research and over 15,000 lab tests. So for me, the benefit is simple. If you want to up your game when it comes to sleep quality and you want to feel like yourself Again, head to bioptimizers.com neuro use my exclusive code neuro to get 15% off any order. You'll also get great discounts, free gifts, and peace of mind of never running out. That is neat. Neuro@bioptimizers.com for 15% off.
- [41:45]
Louise Nicola
You talk about like having, you know, we're consuming more, more sugar, more glucose. It also comes down to what is subsidized. You go and look at like, you know, the subsidies. It's like starch, corn, corn syrup. It's just all the things that are bad for you instead of subsidizing the organic fruits and vegetables. And then it's a compounding effect, right when you have a, when you have your, your glucose, your glucose influx, you want more of it because it's releasing more dopamine. And that's the addictive part. And I think that's probably what you mean right at the by the fact that we are at the mercy of these big conglomerates that are doing this to us rather than having a willpower problem.
- [42:23]
Nick
I mean, look, dude, just, just, you know, metabolically, there's one thing that will spike your blood sugar more than sugar and that's high fructose corn syrup. Why do we have high fructose corn syrup in the United States where, you know, basically nowhere else in the world is it used in such a widespr. Well, the answer is Corn lobby. All right. Why does the corn lobby have so much power? We've talked about the FDA, we haven't talked about the USDA. So what's that?
- [42:48]
Louise Nicola
Let's talk about it.
- [42:49]
Nick
So the USDA is the U.S. department of Agriculture, which, you know, is. Is responsible for setting regulatory scheme alongside the fda, depending on kind of what's. What's involved on food. The challenge is they're also responsible for representing the agriculture industry and the farm industry. So, you know, you talk about misaligned incentives. If you have the, basically the industry group, the industry lobby, if you will, actually, as the enforcer and the regulatory body, or the. One of the regulatory bodies, you have a huge problem, right? You basically have box in the henhouse. And, you know, the USDA is also a very antiquated organization. It was founded, I think, in the 1860s, again, primarily to promote the interests of the agriculture industry, notably at a time when they weren't so contradictory to the health of people. High fructose corn syrup was still a century away from its invention. And so, yeah, it's a pretty crazy regulatory schema that is vestigial from prior periods where the threats were different, where the ingredients were different, where the economics were different and the incentives were different. And you know, we. It's very, very hard to go back, unfortunately, and unwind those. And so again, the approach we've taken at Thrive Market is we're not going to fix the usda, we're not going to fix the fda, but we can offer an alternative solution that empowers consumers to vote with their dollars and do something different.
- [44:23]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Everyone keeps asking me, what creatine do I use now? It really depends. Every single day I use a different one depending on what I'm doing. Right now I'm traveling. And if you think about performance purely in terms of effort, you miss constraint, which is energy. I need to make sure that when I'm traveling, I am utilizing my energy correctly. And this is where creatine plays the role, because it's not just for muscle, it is for your brain. The issue is most people take it without thinking about whether their body can use it. And this is why right now I'm using qualia creatine. Plus, it's built around the full pathway. Absorption, delivery, activation, two forms of creatine plus electrolytes and magnesium. So instead of just consuming it, you're actually supporting your whole body and that's what you need. For me, I take about 10 grams a day. Now, a lot of people may say, but isn't that too much? It's actually not because 5 grams is uptaken by the muscle and then you need to another 5 grams for your brain. You know, even on days that I'm traveling, which was, you know, last night and, and I took, I'm taking 15 grams today. That's how much my, my body needs this stuff. I need to be performing at my peak. So if you want to try the creatine I'm currently having, go to qualia.com neuro and you'll get 50% off because they really love us. So here's the bonus. If you use code Neuro you can get an additional 15% off your order. That is huge. Qualia.com neuro and I think something to
- [46:00]
Louise Nicola
point out which is really staggering is that you're less than 1.5% penetrated across American households. And I thought that that was wild, right? Less than 1.5%. What's the goal for you at Thrive Market in terms of market penetration?
- [46:15]
Nick
So yeah, today again we've exceeded 1.7 million members. We've grown very quickly. I think we're now at a scale
- [46:21]
Louise Nicola
and that's not including the amount of people that are coming in without a membership.
- [46:24]
Nick
Right? Well, you can't shop on Thrive Market without a membership. So what it doesn't include is the people that get a free membership which again, we have hundreds of thousands of active members on site that are getting gives memberships. But in order for our model to work, it has to be, it has to be membership only. So we don't have like an Amazon prime type model where you can shop without it, but you can, you can pay to get it. It truly is a membership model like you would have with Costco. But to your point about being less than 2% penetrated, that's absolutely right. And it just tells us that we're still very early in this mission to make healthy living accessible and that we still have a lot of work to do. Right. It's taken us a decade to get to this place. We've grown very fast. We're beyond the scale of probably 99% of E commerce retailers. We've seen many e commerce retailers fail during the course of our scaling and we've seen one E commerce retailer in Amazon that has been more successful than basically every other one combined by trying to be the everything store. And we really see our role. We're not anti Amazon, but we are the on everything store. Right. Rather than trying to have every product under the sun, we want to have the products that are best for you, we want to be the place that you trust and the place where you can sort of outsource your trust to a platform that will enable you to shop your values and get what you need for your, for your healthy home. But in terms of what our goal is, you know, our goal is to, is, is to make healthy living accessible to all. What does that mean? I think it means we need to be at at least 10 million households of those 100 million. And it also means that we need to be inspiring others. So like, it's not just about Thrive Market being the solution for healthy living. If we can be a platform that allows more brands to get to market sooner who are doing good things, if we can inspire, and we have inspired copycats internationally that are trying to do a similar thing to Thrive Market using the model that we've used so successfully. We're excited about that. You know, we're excited the, the tip of the spear, showing that a mission driven business can be successful, showing that the demand is there. You know, when we went out to fundraise early on in, in this business, we were rejected by every VC we talked to because people didn't, investors didn't think that Americans wanted to get healthy. You know, that has been the narrative I think for so long that, you know, middle America isn't interested in getting healthy. They love their junk food, you know, they want to be shopping at unhealthy options. It's simply not true. They don't have better options, have price points that work for them and they're facing a lot of those barriers that we talked about earlier.
- [48:57]
Louise Nicola
So Nick, you're profitable. Carbon neutral, plastic neutral, zero waste across your fulfillment centers. Most companies that hit 700 million in revenue have quietly abandoned the mission that got them there. I want to know as we wrap everything up, what in your decision architecture kept you moving? Was it the way you were brought up? Watching your mother go through what she did? Like what's, what's the ultimate thing that is driving you every single day and forcing those decisions to keep pushing forward? The mission.
- [49:30]
Nick
It's the mission itself acting as the filter on every decision that we make. And I think we're certainly not the only business that starts with a mission. But to your point, I think it's really tempting. There's so many incentives and so many opportunities and so many investors and so many things that can go wrong in a business that can veer a company off of the mission. I think for us it starts with co founders who believe in that mission and stick with it and a decade in, you know, my, my co founder Sasha and I are still running the business. I think it continues with the culture of the company and using it as a filter for the people that you hire, bringing in people who care about that mission. And then I think as you get bigger, you have to really codify it. And for us, you know, this is maybe our version. Think about the. The US government is codified, I think a regulatory scheme that doesn't work. We've thought about codifying our ingredient quality standards, we thought about codifying our vetting process and we thought about that ongoing and ongoing and ongoing. So that those things have evolved with our business and continued to not only uplevel on the EU standards or uplevel on what Whole Foods did, but also up level on what we did last year so that each year we're getting better and better. And then I think the, you know, the last thing for us has been actually cementing it into the, into the bylaws of the company. And becoming a public corporation was a big decision for us. It's a different legal structure than a C corporation, which is what almost all major companies are. And I think it's, it's really a testament to the fact that we now believe that or we believe that we've shown that a company with a mission can be strengthened by that mission, not only in terms of achieving it, but also in terms of being profitable, in terms of scaling consistently and in terms of being a very successful business evaluated on any other metric. And so, you know, one hope that I have beyond just solving the mission is that we can be an example, a touchstone for other mission driven businesses to see that it is possible and that when you do it the right way and you stick to that North Star mission, whatever it is, consumers reward that. And I think if you're a consumer business, you like any entrepreneur will find sooner or later that what people want most is authenticity. And what resonates most is, is when people are, when businesses are doing what they believe in and, and that's the market that we found is, you know, being that place that people can trust, being that place where they know the mission is real and being that place that they can go to in an environment where there's a lot of barriers to being healthy, that it can actually make it easy.
- [52:16]
Louise Nicola
I'm excited to keep tracking the progress and your mission of getting to 10 million households. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about the mission behind Thrive Market.
- [52:26]
Nick
Nick, thanks for having me.
- [52:38]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
This father's day when you ship UPS Air at the UPS Store, your items arrive on time or your money back guaranteed at no extra cost. It's like the father of all shipping services. It shows up to the airport way too early just to play it safe. It's overprotective about all the things that truly matter, and it's always prompt, especially to be with family. Make it your first choice to celebrate your dad. Ship UPS Air with our Money Back guarantee exclusively at the UPS store US retail locations. Visit theupsstore.com airshipping for full details. Terms and conditions apply.
- [53:08]
Louise Nicola
The most memorable gifts aren't found.
- [53:10]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
They're made. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you pick any product a mug, a card, a tote, a phone case and make it personal. A photo, a name, an inside joke. The kind of gift that actually fits the person. That's what 30 million customers have been coming back to Zazzle for over 20 years to find. Right now, save 25% on your first order@zazzle.com that's zazzle.com make it zamazing.