In this episode of There Is No Alternative, Tina Bou-Saba, founder of CXT Investments, sits down with Julie Sawaya, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Needed, to talk about why so many women are nutrient deficient even when they eat well, and what it took to build the prenatal that practitioners had been asking for.
Julie and her Co-Founder Ryan Woodbury met as next-door neighbors at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Both came from finance, both were the nutrition nerds of their class, and both got back at-home nutrient tests that were almost entirely in the red. Interviews with hundreds of health practitioners who treat women showed the same pattern, and years of research and formulation followed before Needed sold a single product. Nine years and five kids later, Julie and Ryan are still running the company side by side, and the reason they started has only gotten clearer.
In This Episode:
• Why the RDA started as a 1941 wartime bare minimum, and why fewer than 5% of the study participants behind the pregnancy and breastfeeding RDA were actually pregnant or breastfeeding
• The B12 gap: most prenatals dose 2.8 micrograms, while Needed research points to 100 micrograms or more
• Why the most common amount of choline in a prenatal is zero, and the second most common is 55 milligrams
• The investor meeting where someone suggested a Juicero-style machine instead of asking what was in the vitamins
• Why early investors called the category too niche, and how Julie reframed it as decades of life for women
• How one product replaced a $150 practitioner protocol and became the most successful new product launch Fullscript had seen
• Building a community of more than 20,000 practitioners, including free continuing education delivered as a podcast
• Treating the supply chain as a competitive advantage to deliver more nutrition per dollar
• What makes the co-CEO model work, from partnership coaching to covering for one another during maternity leaves
Chapters:
00:00 We Could Not Unsee the Problem
04:07 Next-Door Neighbors at Stanford GSB
05:30 Nutrition Nerds With All-Red Results
09:31 The RDA Is a 1941 Bare Minimum
11:23 Form vs. Dose: The B12 Example
14:52 Choline and the 55 Milligram Mystery
16:36 Drugstore, Practitioner Grade and the Middle
20:00 Practitioners Read the Back of the Label
20:37 How CircleUp Pointed Julie to CPG
23:02 If You Make It, We Will Recommend It
24:24 Why Food Alone Cannot Fix It
28:15 Too Niche, Said the Investors
29:21 The Investor Who Pitched a Juicero
33:48 Years of R&D Before Launch
35:54 One Product Instead of a $150 Protocol
36:36 Building a 20,000 Practitioner Flywheel
41:00 Nutrition Per Dollar and the Supply Chain Edge
44:51 The Gummy Four Years in the Making
47:04 The Case for Co-CEOs
50:36 Not Just Another Kale Chip Company
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