03 Ara Katz on a systems approach to business and experience

Ara Katz is CEO and Founder of Seed Health, Co-Founder of Luca Technologies and serial entrepreneur recognized by a number of lists and publications. Ara and I talk about transitioning from tech to the health and biotech industries, and how she has merged the thinking of both to build an incredible product and experience. In this conversation we discuss:

• How company distribution is critical in making decisions that align with your values from the get go, the difference between board votership and input, and how a diverse eclectic group of investors helped to balance Seed's direction and vision
• How Seed has found a different, more meaningful way to engage in the DTC market through the subscription model, and some of the risks of the model.
• Why our current moment in time this difficult look in the mirror can be productive and helpful and help us feel hopeful as a result.
• How Seed is bridging the gap between clinical data with the holistic experience data as a feedback loop
• How company convictions can sometimes differ from traditional metrics
• Where Seed is going as a company, and how it operates with integrity to its values.

Select highlights:

• "I think there are always challenges for being first or for being early, and you pay for that. But then the ROI has a lot to do with thought leadership, but then of course the experience, both conscious and unconscious of what it means to be in touch with a company or brand the humans that work there, the product itself. There's that gestalt effect where 1+1 is truly 3, that amplifier.... That's where I believe companies go from 10 to the 2nd to 10 to the 6th."
• "Sustainability is not an offset program. these things have to start more ecosystemically and foundationally... it has to be in the batter, and it can't be your frosting."
• If you understand biology and work in science and care about the environment, but also in our world of health and microbes, we just dont see a distinction between human and environmental health."
• "For the most part, as within without... its very strange to offer something to someones health for their human body while also serving it up in a way that completely disregards the health of our greater ecosystem."