VIDEO_ Mission_ Reverse Diabetes (2017)

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Alberta Carpenter
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1 VIDEO_ Mission_ Reverse Diabetes (2017) Sami Inkinen: There is something very powerful to me that you can create something from scratch and have an impact, posi8ve impact on human lives. And I find that as an entrepreneur in some cases you can even have more impact then than a poli8cian and a posi8ve impact. But where that's coming from I haven't really figure that out, but growing up on a farm you suddenly learn the value of very hard work and when you work hard you can really see the results. So perhaps there's something in there. My personal experience of finding out that I was pre- diabe8c as a world- class triathlete happened around the same 8me that I lee my opera8onal role at Trulia. Like how is it possible that someone who is not obese, exercises ten hours a week and supposedly is ea8ng healthy is developing type 2 diabetes? And if I can understand that perhaps there is a seed of knowledge that allows me and perhaps then help others to figure out how can you reverse type 2 diabetes or prevent people from becoming a type 2 diabe8c. I like to think that people fly 10 or 12 hours to see the Golden Gate Bridge and I ride my bike across the bridge every morning just to get to my office, so it's like a treat for me. Meredith Loring: When he is training for an athle8c event, the first step is really making a plan. And that could take a week. That could take him a week to make his training plan. And he is very thoughpul about it. And he's thinking about, "Okay, what's my daily life at work for each day "and where can I fit in my workouts "and when do I have to take care of the baby? And you know, which days do I need to recover, how many hard days can I have?" And then he leaves it all out. And then the fun thing for him is actually following the training plan, not compe8ng. Sami Inkinen: One of the biggest challenges in building a company is realizing that it never gets easier. In fact it only gets harder and harder and harder. So this is more kind of like a psychological lesson, but you have to learn to enjoy the process and enjoy the every day challenges of trying to solve problems. So I remember I had many moments I went, "Oh, this is so hard! "I wish we could get to profitability, I wish we could get to this point and then it's going to be easy." It never gets easier. Your problems get bigger, your opportuni8es get bigger, the pressures get bigger, so you have to learn to kind of enjoy that process. Dr. Stephen Phinney: Working with Sami is a bit like... using an analogy, with a nuclear power plant. You've got to stay on your toes, because things move very quickly. But the energy there is

2 intense but contained. And that's relevant to the fact that Sami is trained as a nuclear engineer and I think when he graduated from the University of Helsinki he worked at a nuclear power plant in Finland for two years. So I have to work hard to keep up, but I am thrilled with the opportunity to do that. By the way, you may have heard him say that the reason why he gave up his job at the nuclear power plant was he was there for two years and nothing exci8ng ever happened. That's a good thing. Sami Inkinen: I grew up in Finland on a farm. My parents were working outside of the farm. It was a wonderful place to grow up. My window to what was happening outside of countryside was really books and magazines and I think that's really how I learned technology and computers and perhaps Netscape is one of the companies that I admired most and obviously one of the first web browsers was developed by Netscape. So it was a product that I was interac8ng personally every day. It was always my dream as an entrepreneur to come to Silicon Valley. I like to say that if you are an actor or actress anywhere in the world, you want to go to Hollywood, if you are a hockey player in Europe, you want to go to the NHL. And the NHL of entrepreneurs is Silicon Valley, so that was always my dream. So in 2003 I figured that a legi8mate and legal way to get a two- year visa in America is to come to graduate school. And so I applied to Stanford business school. I think it was my second week at Stanford when I got to a small group that had lunch with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and I remember that moment... There was this goofy guy who had a very loud and funny laugh and I remember thinking, perhaps somewhat judging... I thought, "Wow, this funny guy, if he can start a company that changes the world "and have such an amazing impact, there is no reason why I couldn't do that." So that was one of those most inspira8onal moments, when I felt like anyone can do anything as long as you have big enough dreams and you work hard. David Hatch: Sami likes first to do things at work that's kind of interes8ng. We work in a big glass office space and next there are some other companies next- door. So everybody can see everything. So some8mes we've done some things that are like, "People must think we're nuts." So we say like, "All right, guys, push- ups." And then everyone jumps and does push- ups for 60 seconds. You know, I can only imagine other companies looking in like, "What the heck are they doing over there?" Same with the medita8on, you know. You walk by a room full of people with their eyes closed, dead quiet in a corporate office... You're going to wonder, "What's going on?" Sami Inkinen: With another European immigrant I started an online real estate marketplace, Trulia, in 2004, It was amazing entrepreneurial journey building something from scratch, building an amazing team, trying to change perhaps one of the most conserva8ve industries in America, residen8al real estate. Trulia went public 2012 at the New York Stock Exchange and

3 right before that I decided that I want to step back from my opera8onal role and focus on the board of directors work. David Hatch: When he was actually leaving Trulia, somebody in our HR stood up and was crying and said, "Isn't there anything you could do to stay?" And I thought, "That's crazy." That's kind of the impact he's had on people and how people see him in terms of really maintaining that... kind of the soul of the organiza8on. Shannon Field: His reputa8on, his legacy was in crea8ng an amazing place to work even aeer he had lee. People aeributed that to Sami. Trulia was a place where people loved to work. People that worked there were intelligent but not ego8s8cal and not arrogant. They were very smart, very collabora8ve. It was just made for an amazing and rare place to work and again a lot of people credited Sami for crea8ng that culture. Meredith Loring: What happens when you are first diagnosed, it's like shocking. Like, "How could I have this?" And then you know, looking at what exis8ng solu8ons were out there and then trying to wrap your mind around the fact that you might be on medica8ons. You know he went through that. So I think he has his finger on kind of the pulse of what our pa8ents deal with and have dealt with, in some cases for the last 30, 40 years. Dr. Stephen Phinney: I've got an about three years ago, a liele over three years ago from somebody I've never heard of, named Sami Inkinen, and he didn't send me the saying, "Hey, I want to start a company with you." He said, "I'm going to row a boat from California to Hawaii and I want to do it on low- carb because I'm convinced that's the best diet." And I said, "Okay." And then he elaborated, "I'm going to row this 22 foot boat to Hawaii with my wife." I said, "You're crazy." But I decided to meet Sami and Meredith and we got together for what I thought it would be a brief lunch and I would convince them that they shouldn't do it, it's too dangerous. We spent then about four, five months planning the kind of food that you could pack without refrigera8on and provide adequate nutri8on and as you're aware, they pulled it off brilliantly and crossed to Honolulu in under 46 days, 45 days three hours. And the fastest previous crossing by any two- person boat was 60 days. Then Sami said, "We have to figure out how to turn this into a scalable product that we can push off to people with type 2 diabetes. Meredith Loring: We're prac8cing medicine, we're taking people off their diabetes medica8ons which in America is completely unheard of. Like doctors are not trained on how to take people off medica8on. They're only trained on how to put people on medica8on. And so we faced a lot of challenges just from the medical community and people who think they know what the right way to treat a type 2 diabe8c is.

4 Shannon Field: We all come to work every day knowing that our mission is to reverse diabetes in 100 million people by One of the first things I did when I started a year and a half ago was go to Lafayeee Indiana, which is where our clinical trial is and meet the people that we're helping. I s8ll tear up when I watch our Tes8monial videos, I s8ll envy our health coaches and the sort of direct pa8ent interac8on that they have, because some of us working on the soeware can be a liele bit more removed from it. Dr. Stephen Phinney: People are surprised by our mission which is to reverse diabetes in 100 million people. And that started with Jeff Volek and myself, where our goal was to reverse it in one million people. And we thought that would be a huge success. And Jeff and I figured if we worked at this for 10 years, we might be able to help 1 million people. Sami pointed out that in that same 10 years United States alone will create another 10 million people with diabetes, so we'd win the baele and lose a war. So his point was, "You've got to be able to scale this to 100 million people." Sami Inkinen: I really started Virta to help millions of people living with type 2 diabetes get access to beeer care and then reverse their type 2 diabetes without surgery. And we do that by pugng the world's best diabetes clinic and the world's best condi8ons into the pockets of pa8ents, that is we deliver the care through a smartphone. BriKanie Volk: As a health coach I have the one- on- one interac8on with the pa8ent. That means that I'm communica8ng with that pa8ent through the app. They are using an app every single day to input their biomarkers, so they are measuring their glucose, their ketones, their blood pressure. What they are measuring and how oeen is going to depend on their health, their medica8ons, we as health coaches are talking to them. In the beginning we're talking to them every day, some8mes mul8ple 8mes a day, guiding them through dietary changes. Changing your lifestyle is not easy. I'm sure many people can relate to that, right? It's not easy and having a coach behind you to help you make those changes I think it makes all the difference in the world. Michael Scahill: Virta is uniquely powerful in that we don't have to give specific one- size- fits- all dietary recommenda8ons. For every person for reasons of gene8cs, or microbiome, or probably things we haven't even thought of yet, their diet is different. So we're not a one size all solu8on and we're not a diet. BriKanie Volk: Everything we recommend is science- based, so that's first and foremost. Concepts need to be reinforced so the health coach is there to reinforce that, "I no8ce that your protein is a bit high. Let's talk about that. Or your glucose is high... why might that be?" And make sure that they're pugng the science into prac8ce. Michael Scahill: The way I oeen describe it is that your average Western diet consists of about this many carbs and if one is able to get carbs down into this range, that goes a long way,

5 because it eliminates the cycling of insulin and carbohydrates. And especially for someone on insulin, that can really improve their safety. Meredith Loring: The food marke8ng is insane, you can't escape it. If you walk down the isle you're bombarded with claims, "It's liele fat, it's low- calorie." Everywhere you look it's really difficult to dis8nguish what's healthy and what's not. Sami Inkinen: It was a preey clear realiza8on that all this healthy ea8ng... five bowls of oatmeal a day and three, four, five, six apples and all this good stuff that was supposedly healthy, it was preey clear to me that I had exceeded my personal carbohydrate tolerance level and so I turned that completely around and started cugng down processed carbohydrates first and then cugng more and more as I realized I was feeling beeer and beeer. Michael Scahill: He is an incredible person to work for. He is honest, he is forthcoming, he is very thoughpul and very strategic and I really appreciate having all those quali8es in a leader and I'm trying to learn my personal style from him. Shannon Field: He actually has a saying, "Systems are for winners. Set up a system, set up a system and let it go. Set up an organiza8on that's living and breathing, it's full of smart people who have clear goals and shared values and they will do great things. Dr. Stephen Phinney: Having the opportunity to be part of this mission here is to me thrilling. I'm glad I lived this long to be able to see this poten8al come to bear for you. David Hatch: I ve worked in Silicon Valley for my whole career doing good work, but an opportunity like this to help this many people, working with a leader that you trust and a leader that has a very clear vision based on personal experience, I felt it was a great decision to join. Sami Inkinen: There is a liele bit of guilt in me, because for decades I was walking around, running around the world thinking if you're obese, if you're living with type 2 diabetes you can only blame yourself. You can only blame yourself because you're not doing what I'm doing, which is I'm exercising, I'm ea8ng less, I'm taking care of myself. And then I found that I was pre- diabe8c myself. So I was judging a lot of people in my mind, thinking, "You're not doing what I'm doing. If you were doing what I do, you would be healthy." I wasn't healthy. So Virta is my way of effec8vely giving back and say, "Hey, it's actually not your fault." You just need access to beeer care, you need access to the tools and the doctors who are going to reverse your disease. So a part of it is, frankly, it's almost like my apology to my own mindset and judgment for decades. Michael Scahill: His hair is always perfect, it's in the exact same spot every 8me I see him and I'm a liele jealous because his hair is beeer than mine.

6 Sami Inkinen: You're looking good. Michael Scahill: Thanks boss, I've worked out my hair.

Sarah Hallberg interview 1

Sarah Hallberg interview 1 Can you reverse diabetes by ignoring the dietary guidelines that you get? That is what my guest claims in a TEDeX talk that has been seen over 600,000?mes. I'm Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt