Health Tech: Laurence Girard On How Fruit Street’s Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

An Interview With Dave Philistin

Funding: Raising capital is of course a priority when starting any business. Now there are ways to raise funding beyond the traditional ways of institutional means.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laurence Girard.

Laurence Girard is the CEO & Founder of Fruit Street Health which is a public benefit corporation that delivers the CDC’s Diabetes Prevention Program via telehealth and live group video conferencing with registered dietitians. Laurence has raised more than $30 million in equity financing from more than 500 physicians who have invested in Fruit Street and support Fruit Street’s goal of preventing millions of cases of Type 2 diabetes through the power of telehealth. Fruit Street received Full Recognition from the CDC for its clinical outcomes as it relates to its diabetes prevention program.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in Huntington, New York and I was always interested in science in middle school. I remember our school field trip to the DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and how it sparked my interest in science. However, in 8th grade my interest in science shifted to soccer when I watched the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. In high school, I played competitive soccer ultimately playing for the U18 academy team for a professional soccer team in Major League Soccer called the New York Red Bulls. Many of my friends from that team went on to play professionally and the team even played against the Argentina National Team with Lionel Messi, one of the most famous soccer players in the world. When I was 18, I was not as fulfilled with soccer as I had originally expected, and I made the decision to stop pursuing professional soccer and focus on something with a more direct social impact and go to medical school. The year after I graduated from high school, I spent more than 700 hours volunteering in my local emergency room at Huntington Hospital while simultaneously taking a nutrition epidemiology course with a Harvard School of Public Health professor through the Harvard Extension School. I realized that many of the patients coming into the emergency room with heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and obesity were there because their conditions related to poor diet and lifestyle. Quickly my interest in diet and exercise that had stemmed from soccer, had become an acute interest in using diet and lifestyle for prevention and public health.

I soon became interested in telemedicine because I was also volunteering for an education non-profit called Learn to Be that provided free online tutoring for K-12 students, which led me to start applying this concept to public health and telemedicine. The following year I had moved to Boston and was in the bachelor’s degree Program at the Harvard Extension School which is the division of continuing education. The Harvard Extension School is normally for adult learners, but at the time a group of traditional age college students pursued it for their undergraduate degree. Some of my professors in the psychology department were physicians like Dr. Beth Frates and Eddy Phillips who started the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School where they teach physicians how to do these types of lifestyle interventions with their patients. My interest in public health and lifestyle modification only continued to grow in college. The first year I was in Boston was when Harvard opened the Harvard Innovation Lab on the Harvard Business School Campus. The Harvard Innovation Lab is an entrepreneurship center that was started to help launch ventures. Serial entrepreneurs would come to teach and mentor the students. I started Fruit Street as a summer project at the Harvard Innovation Lab after meeting some physicians from Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School alumni that were willing to invest in my idea and help me write a business plan. The name Fruit Street ultimately was an idea of the first physicians who invested in the company, it was named after the address of Massachusetts General Hospital where the first physicians that invested into Fruit Street trained. What originally started as a summer project became a lifelong passion for using technology and entrepreneurship to have a social impact in healthcare. Now Fruit Street’s mission over the next decade is to prevent millions of cases of Type 2 diabetes and to prevent avoidable deaths from the disease.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

When I was 18 years old, I spent more than 700 hours volunteering in my local emergency room. On one summer day, I heard an ambulance call into the nursing station that there was an obese middle-aged man coming into the emergency room with cardiac arrest. One of the nurses knew that I was a premed student and recommended that I stand in the corner of the trauma room so that I could experience what this type of situation was like. Ultimately the ambulance arrived at the emergency room and the man was so obese that the paramedics had trouble transferring the man from the ambulance to the stretcher because of his weight. Once they got the man onto the emergency room stretcher, the paramedic was doing CPR while other hospital staff pushed the stretcher. Ultimately, they attempted to save that obese man in the trauma room, but he passed away right in front of me. Fifteen minutes later I was asked by some of the nurses to assist them with bringing the deceased man to the hospital morgue. In the morgue, I helped the nurses lift the man from the stretcher onto a table. It was at this moment when I felt how heavy the man was that I realized the devastating impact that obesity has on our society, and I forever wanted to do something to prevent this from ever happening again. I realized that this man passed away and left a family behind because of a death that could have been prevented through diet and lifestyle.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

The beautiful thing about Fruit Street is that there is not one particular person that can be credited for its success. Fruit Street is supported by hundreds of investors, physicians, dietitians, software engineers, businesspeople, and partners that are collectively striving to prevent millions of cases of Type 2 diabetes. I would like to thank every one of these individuals for their support along the way.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite life lesson quote, and one that helped shaped my company is “The only thing that ever changed the world was a small group of committed citizens, indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Meede. When I started Fruit Street, I thought that for an entrepreneur to be successful, they had to get venture capital funding from a top Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firm just like Mark Zuckerberg did in the movie The Social Network. Even though I pitched nearly every top venture capital firm in the country and none of them invested, I realized that my idea had a tremendous potential to impact millions of lives and that I could get my idea started if just one physician believed in me enough to invest in my idea. I eventually realized that if I could get hundreds of physicians to invest in my idea that this would be so much more powerful than having one venture capital firm invest. The reason for this is that I would now have hundreds or thousands of people supporting my social mission who were not just investing to make money, but also because they wanted to have a profound social impact in healthcare. You don’t need a venture capital firm to be successful. You just need a few hundred people that share your vision for how to make the world a better place to believe in your idea with you.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

The three character traits that I think were most instrumental to my success were resiliency, humility, and curiosity.

Resiliency: When I first started working on the idea for Fruit Street, I had raised about $1 million for a previous startup that ultimately failed in that corporate form due to the wrong co-founder and impatient investors. One of the larger investors ultimately tried to take over the company and shut it down in exchange for a tax credit. Many people in this position would have simply given up. However, I knew that we had a good idea (despite the fact the investor gave up) and I decided to start Fruit Street immediately afterwards in May of 2014 and offer all of the old investors free shares in the new company. This resiliency allowed me to continue with my idea and bring Fruit Street to where it is today.

Humility: I am always trying to prove my own assumptions to be incorrect. One of my favorite quotes is from Mark Twain which reads, “It’s not what you don’t know what kills you, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so!” In addition to living by this quote, I have surrounded myself with hundreds of investors and advisors who are double or triple my age who have given me advice along the way. I think it is extremely important for young entrepreneurs to surround themselves with experienced businesspeople.

Curiosity: I try to always ask questions and learn from my various network of advisors with an open mind to envision what’s possible. I recall reading that if you think you’re the smartest person in the room, bring in someone smarter. I have strived to do this within my network to be on a constant path of growth and learnings.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

More than 1 in 3 adults have prediabetes which means they have elevated blood glucose and have a high risk for developing Type 2 diabetes. The goal of Fruit Street’s diabetes prevention program is to help individuals with prediabetes lose 5–7% of their weight to reduce their risk for Type 2 diabetes. Our program is based on a Medicare funded clinical trial that found that the diabetes prevention program (which is a lifestyle modification program) helped people reduce their risk for Type 2 diabetes by more than 58% and in people over the age of 60 they reduced their risk by more than 71%. Individuals participating in our program receive coaching from a registered dietitian in areas such as diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, and so forth. When they participate in the program and lose weight, they are not just reducing their risk for Type 2 diabetes, but they are improving their wellness and reducing their risk for a variety of diet and lifestyle related diseases such as heart disease and stroke.

How do you think your technology can address this?

Fruit Street closely replicates an in-person diabetes prevention class by delivering the diabetes prevention program via telehealth and live group video conferencing. Telehealth makes diabetes prevention programs accessible to people in rural areas who otherwise would not have access. It also makes it more convenient for people living everywhere because they do not need to waste time driving to a physical diabetes prevention class which often might be as much as an hour away.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

I was originally planning to go to medical school and was volunteering in an emergency room while taking a nutrition epidemiology course. I realized that many of the patients coming into the emergency room had preventable lifestyle related conditions. As mentioned earlier, when I witnessed an obese man pass from a heart attack, that was the moment that inspired me to feel passionate about starting Fruit Street.

How do you think this might change the world?

By preventing millions of cases of Type 2 diabetes and other preventable lifestyle related diseases in a scalable delivery modality.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

In our mobile app, we have a functionality where participants can take pictures of their meals in our photo-based food log. This tracking allows our dietitians to comment on meals in between sessions to provide real-time feedback on nutrition value and other recommendations. The potential drawback here is that by taking pictures of food at your mealtimes, you are positioned to have your phone out at the table where you can be distracted by notifications rather than being mindful of what you’re eating.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1. Relatable Mission: Have a mission that others can not only believe in, but directly relate to.
2. Product Vision: You need to have a vision of your product or service and be able to drive direction to team members on your vision.
3. Funding: Raising capital is of course a priority when starting any business. Now there are ways to raise funding beyond the traditional ways of institutional means.
4. Team/Support: Hire a team that can execute on your vision.
5. Believe in Yourself: Trust your instinct and follow through on your vision.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

I would tell young people that they should consider making a positive impact on society because it is more rewarding to build a business that makes money and helps people at the same time. In fact, it is not only more rewarding, but it is easier to build a social impact business because people will be more interested in working with you as employees and investors. Many businesspeople now are not just looking to make money, but they are also looking to have a social impact with the work they are doing. Employees are also more motivated to work not just for a paycheck, but for a social mission as well. For me, our social mission is to prevent millions of cases of Type 2 diabetes over the next decade. This excites me.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I would like to have breakfast with President Barack Obama. He is an inspiring leader that clearly cared deeply about having a social impact in healthcare evidenced by the work that he did with passing the Affordable Care Act. The work he did to impact is admirable, but he also seems to have the ability to inspire the average person to have a social impact on their community.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

• Laurence Girard
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtTCTa-oR4Zm2jrQ0ZZkelg
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/girardlaurence/
• Fruit Street:
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/fruit-street-health-pbc/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.