Virta Health and the Hard Right Thing
I advised Max to pass on Virta twice before investing. The first time was hardly a pass. Sami told Max about how he thought he could reverse type II diabetes without a therapeutic, and it sounded like such a pipedream (reversing type II diabetes!?) that I didn’t even bother digging into the science.
A couple months later Sami sent over his first deck that explained the foundations of the science. After some digging, we found the science (mostly around ketosis) was not only very real, but in fact has been well understood for the better part of a century. There was still a catch, though. While the science behind a ketogenic diet is well understood, actually maintaining a ketogenic diet is hard.
Sami was adamant that people would rationally adhere to the program given the enormous increase they’d experience in quality of life. To put things in perspective, Sami founded Trulia, worked at McKinsey, rowed from SF to Hawaii unassisted…in world record time, and is an Ironman world champion. A handful of peanuts can knock you out of ketosis, and we thought that maybe the only person in the world with enough discipline to actually avoid these not-so-proverbial peanuts was Sami. So, we passed again.
A few months later Sami sent over the initial results of Virta’s trial. At the time they were around half way through and 90% of the people who had started were still adherent, and showing phenomenal results (complete results here: http://diabetes.jmir.org/2017/1/e5/).
“How is this possible?” We thought. “What’s the magic trick here?” The answer became apparent when we met the rest of the team. Again, there’s no magic trick, it’s just really hard.
The science doesn’t work for a diabetes patient if it’s not administered with the right clinical oversight. The clinical oversight simply can’t be effective without fantastic software and hardware experiences for the patient. A good UX can’t be built without strong guidance from the science. Virta has a team that is not only excellent in each of these categories, but truly collaborative across them.
Most interestingly to me, the experience is not designed to be easy, just honest. Diabetes patients have it tough, and while the Virta program delivers massive life changing benefits, they don’t try to hide the fact that it won’t work without some really big changes in patients’ lives.
I got it wrong the first couple of times, but I now believe many American’s want these changes and have the grit to obtain them. It takes both someone committed to this personal change, as well as Virta’s ability to navigate the complicated path of maintaining a lifestyle that enables the reversal of type II diabetes. We’re excited to now be investors in Virta, and thrilled to be partners in their goal to enable people to do the hard right thing.
