Swatee Surve, Founder and CEO of Litesprite, joins the show this week. Litesprite is a new way for employers and employees to experience mental health benefits through an interactive environment that teaches people how to master their own zen. Swatee and I discuss mental health, what it's like working in the healthcare space, fundraising, revenue models, and plenty of stories about life and learning.

Episode Resources:

https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/14/how-game-leaders-can-change-systems-to-improve-employee-mental-health/

https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/19/swatee-surve-interview-showing-gratitude-to-your-friends-in-a-game/

https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/10/litesprites-game-for-treating-depression-gets-an-endorsement-from-bayers-startup-accelerator/

Welcome to the meadow woman podcast. We address the

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Hello, and welcome to the metal woman podcast part

of the holodeck media Podcast Network. I'm your host, Lindsey,

the Boss Boss and from struggle to success. We're covering it

all. It's all returning listeners. Thank you for

listening to my voice week after week. Thank you for sending me

messages. Keep

doing that.

And for all the new listeners welcome. I hope

you enjoy it. I hope you'll go back and listen to more

episodes. I hope you'll listen to future episodes. I hope

you'll join me. As many of you know, one of the many things I

like to cover on the show is how to improve mental health, and

just how to deal with bad days and struggles. That's why it's

from struggle to success and everything in between. But for

that reason, I'm excited for today's guest swatches survey.

SWATI is founder and CEO of light Sprite, which is a new way

for employers and employees to experience mental health

benefits. SWATI Welcome to the show. I would love for you to

introduce yourself and give I can't do the perfect

introduction here. Right. So it's up to you tell me who you

are, and let everyone know what you do and, and what lights it's

all about. Sure. Um,

so I'm the founder and CEO of lights bright. And I'm an

engineer by training. So I have a bachelor's in Biomedical

Engineering, and I have a master's in mechanical

engineering. So I'm I like to build things and I like to

create. I'm a bit of a tinkerer. although probably not as good as

I would like to be like, because I have a tendency to take things

apart. But I can never put them back together again and get them

working again. I tried to do that with time. I'm gonna really

I'm gonna really date myself because I'm really old. But I

was trying to I got really curious about an answering

machine one time, and I thought it'd be fun to to disassemble

it. I couldn't put it back together.

Yeah, that's a new one. Yeah. Old school. No, no, I

just mean, I would I never looked at an answering machine.

My parents take you apart. It's one of those things.

So um, and for me, what I've really been what's really

driven my personal interest is that intersection between health

and technology, and how do you create technology that people

can use for themselves to to take them take care of their

health and improve it. And that's really been my passion,

hence, the biomedical engineering and even when I was

doing mechanical engineering, it was around biomechanics. So

studying how people walked, for example, so and my roles I

before launching lights bright, I worked in a variety of

corporate roles, but these were a little different. I was

working in a large company. So I started my career at Nike,

excuse me at Kodak. And I was recruited by Nike. And and then

I also worked at Microsoft and it T Mobile, or some some some

of the global brands that I've worked at, I've worked with a

lot of I've also worked in nonprofit and radio. Yes, so

I've done that. I was doing business development, or Public

Radio International. And I've done a smattering of things

before launching into LightScribe. But the core core

focus that I had, was really about are the roles I was

playing was around incubating and creating new ideas or

business opportunities for all of these organizations. They

were at inflection points where they knew disruptive technology

was coming down the pipeline, and they want to position well

to take advantage of those revenue for the company. So So

these were generally incubation groups, research in research

labs. That's where I came but I was an entrepreneur in

residence. So not just in I was focused on that intersection of

outside of the radio, one that can't really do help keep focus,

but most of the other ones were all focused at the intersection

of healthcare and technology. And and how do you create

products? How do you create businesses? How do you

commercialize these emerging innovations? Also, from a

business strategy perspective? What if, if Nike, for example, I

was recruited to work on wearables? So what's the

company's position in that in that space? Now, mind you? This

was in 2001. There was no quick technology.

That's true. Yeah, it was a little bit before then.

Yes, we wouldn't be another full 10 years before

with with proliferation of mobile and adoption of mobile,

that you would see that opportunity come up. Right. But

but those were the kinds of questions I was talking about,

those were the kind of the strategic trade offs and, and

proposals we have to make, generally, to senior leadership.

So it positioned and I even worked in an insurance Health

insurance company, right before I launched lights, right. So and

that was also to help them with the ACA, I was in corporate

strategy and helping them figure out how to respond to the ACA.

So it was a lot of that, you know, in what that all of those

things taught me was a couple of things, it taught me how to

evaluate an idea identify, like, an opportunity for the future, I

apparently was good at it, which is why it kept getting these

rolls.

That's always good. Yeah. And so

um, and, and I also gained really, depreciation of the wall

technology hasn't doesn't have if you're especially trying to

address health issues and health concerns. Because those roles,

it wasn't just consumers, I would talk to talk to doctors, I

would talk to health care system, I would talk to

insurance company, executives write in, in a variety of, in a

variety of ways release different roles. And, and I

really began and I talked to patients, right. And so I really

began to get a deep understanding of not just the

business challenges in healthcare, and that's hard.

But, and those are complex, but also, what does a patient

ultimately, which is always been my thing, so I just to help help

the end user help the patient case. And so and, and what I

found, is that it's individual motivation, not the technology

that really matters. So the technology that enables

inspiration empowers, it makes things easier for patient, then

you're gonna start to see that behavior change, and they're

gonna feel like, and they have the tools at their disposal to

make the changes. So seeing that, and then, when I was doing

and it was, like, all along, I was always tinkering on the side

trying to figure out, well, maybe I should do my own thing.

And there were a couple of ideas which, which are, frankly, are

billion dollar business ideas now. Which is fine. But I

didn't, I didn't feel like I was the right person. For those. So

like, in 2001 2002, I was thinking, well, wouldn't it be

great if you could

rent clothes? Yeah. And I'm like, I'm funny.

And I'm like, you know, I really don't. And at that

time, you know, you really kind of had to go to centers where

things were in my vision of it was, you know, I just don't want

to live in New York. I like it. I was in upstate. So, like, I'm

not, I'm not a Sex in the City kind of girls. So it's cool.

It's cool to visit. I love it, but it's me and I grew up in

Chicago, right? Like, I'm a Midwestern er, so was it like a

big city was out of out of out of something I wasn't familiar

with, you know, and I guess I went out and lived in upstate, I

go up a lot. I go down to the city quite a bit, so I knew it,

but I don't really know when I'm not feeling it. So. But yeah,

that's, that's I think,

I mean, for that to

happen. I just couldn't figure out like, for me, like, I just

didn't feel like I was the right person for that idea. And I was

like, um, I don't, I couldn't figure out the logistics. From

logistics behind that, I'm like, Wow, this would be really,

really hard. It's gonna take a lot of money. I don't have money

and time you think it's hard fundraising now, back then they

weren't, you couldn't even get a meeting with like an investor,

right? Like, if you're a person of color level, like they

weren't, they weren't, they would. If I talked to investors

back in the day, I would have to wear a wedding ring just to make

sure that they would behave properly and even then they

wouldn't necessarily Oh, yeah, I'd have to, like fake a wedding

ring. Um, some of the questions I would get asked. Were pretty I

mean, you know, we've all heard the horror stories, right? And

then that that's the way it was just like I like I don't do

house. Those are one of the ideas that I had. But back to

lights bright. I had seen some of the early indicators. In in

2000, there were some peer reviewed journals talking about

gaming improving. In that case, it was in this is a very, very

well known, published study in the community. It was a video

game called Snow World, and it helped burn victims do their

physical exercises without without any morphine. And it

was, right. So I'm like, how someone's going to make this

happen. It's going to come right. And you know, that was

2010 years later, still haven't seen anything. And we comes out,

X box with Kinect comes out. And I'm like, hasn't this taken off

yet? Right? And the nicey? Or, like, Okay, well, consumers

certainly want it. Right. They're buying units and all

that. So like, okay, and, and then when I started doing more

research and reading the papers, I saw that gaming could in fact,

improve health outcomes, but they weren't focused on that.

Those were all physical games. Very few were focused. And those

are mainly like for health reasons, like healthy games,

extra gaming, as they call it, but very few, if you look now,

from the business side of healthcare, where the cost is,

and where the problem is, is people have a lot of chronic

issues and are really sick. They're the high cost dividuals.

So no, looking at that. So I said, Well, what if we created a

platform, that could be games that could actually help with

help people with chronic conditions? And, and then

looking at that, and now this is 2013. So no one's really

thinking about mental health at this point in time. And, in

fact, a lot of people like Why Why are you doing mental health,

like, cares about that?

That was the reaction, right. But it was an underserved

year in industry, from many perspectives from a technology

perspective. It but it also made it harder to create a business

because the backing was there, even the healthcare community

wasn't. But I said, you know, I think there's an opportunity

here. And so we started working in mental health as the first

start. Now, the other component highlights, right, that's also

equally important is that the games themselves collect

valuable data that we can give back to the provider, or the

insurance company, or even the employer in an anonymized secure

fashion to ensure privacy. And then that data is used for

remote patient monitoring, it can be used to help with member

experience, it can help employers address burnout with

employees, especially in hybrid environments. So so there's a

whole data channel and what can happen is over time, with the

high the unique data that we collect, we can actually start

to build models that can be used and in for predictive risk for

predicting risk. And in the case of mental health, predicting an

individual who may be have may be at risk for suicide.

So that's how I got started.

A little meandering here and there. But a common

thread and and so I've been doing this since what 2013 Now,

I'm bringing it to the forefront. And

so tell everyone a little bit about what lights

brick does and how it works. I know you mentioned some of the

things that I can address, but I want to get into like how you

actually are able to then service people Sure.

So with mental health, we built a clinically validated

mental health video game called Sprite. And what that does is

it's a, we call it it, the format of the game is called,

it's a player driven world exploration game, or choose your

own adventure, more commonly known. And we have a little

protagonist sauce, sacrifice success with me today. I'm

keeping the company. But socks wants to be a Zen master. And so

what happens in the game is that players learn a range of skills

as they help stocks as investors. So and that's the

unique piece of this is that we actually are teaching skills,

but we're not focused just on one. But we are presenting a

range and we teach by doing, we don't teach by, by lecturing, we

teach by doing. As when one player who said to me, I have

had anxiety all my life, and struggled with it, I've used all

the apps out there, all the meditation apps, they don't

work. But in yours is the first one that doesn't even talk about

stress, you just get in there and do things.

Oh, I see. Okay. So don't talk

about it, which is not strictly and it actually doesn't

stress me out using this app. Okay, so So that's the player

experience. Right. And so, and these techniques that we teach,

we teach a range, as I mentioned, and those are

journaling, there's diaphragmatic breathing, there's

meditation, there's a multiplayer experience with

gratitude. So it's a range of skills that we teach. And these

are all evidence based, and, and mindfulness strategies that are

proven to improve stress, and reduce stress and improve

anxiety and depression symptoms. And then, the other way the game

works is that the framework that all of these experiences, we

have mini games, so we teach these in the form of mini games,

the mini games themselves, sit on a framework, which is called

Bandura, social cognitive theory. And that's designed to

improve a player self awareness and their self efficacy. So what

ends up happening is, as I said, we teach by doing. And the other

other piece of it is that it becomes an experience and a

place for

people to go.

And so people say it's a place for me to go, it's a place for

me to explore, it's a place for me to process my emotions in a

way that, that I can't anywhere else in a non judgmental way.

It's at my pace, I direct it. So that's how Cinna sprite works.

And it's easy. It's meant to be done in less than five minutes a

day. Whenever you know, and that's what we've seen. Speaking

of New York, I have a lot of friends in New York, I love

them. And I've heard some reports where people have been

able to do some meditation while on the train or the bus. So some

high high, high traffic high noise area, but it's, it's

pretty easy to implement. And that's the point of the

experience

itself. And can you go over how you actually get

it to people, because I think this is one of the unique parts

of how sim sprite works. I know that you go through employers

quite a bit. So how did that didn't first move on by model?

And then second, can you talk about why you chose this method?

Or how that came about?

Sure. Um, yeah, that's an interesting one, because

everyone always asked us, they think we're a consumer company,

consumer facing company, but most healthcare startups for

their real monetization model, they're generally enterprise. So

they're gonna sell to one to three customers, we're gonna

sell to an insurance company, they'll sell to a health system,

or they will sell to an employee. And so, um, and, and

prior to the pandemic, where we were seeing interests were from

health systems, or providers and surance company. So that's what

we're focusing on. And frankly, a lot of the work that we were

doing. We were, you know, our clinical validation, our the

work that we were doing around, even getting paid and the

reimbursement pathways. That was all to address those, the needs

of that customer base. But then when COVID hit me ended up we

start getting inbound requests.

And they were saying,

and I'm sure everybody has experienced this themselves,

where they saw a lot of people were really struggling in 2020.

And in for good reason. It was not a great year. And a lot of

ways, so. And so we said, Okay, well, maybe there's an untapped

business opportunity here. And and we continue to get inbound

requests. And so, so we're now offering, we have a free version

that anybody can download on the App Store or send a sprite. And

maybe you can include those in the links or something. Yes,

absolutely.

But, uh, but we have a free version. So that part of

our mission to make sure everybody has access to some

tools is there. And then we have an enterprise version for

employers that they can then roll out to all of their

employees.

Okay, and can you tell me about how you decided to

go with that model? We're, well, I guess a better way of saying

it is, what are some of the benefits and drawbacks of being

an organization that works on the employer to employee side

rather than kind of more direct? Like, and I know you have

personally Absolutely. Now, which is awesome. And what are

kind of the benefits of doing the health insurance way? versus

going straight to the App Store? Yeah, um,

I honestly, it's very difficult to so I'm, I'm a I'm a

cuz Believe it or not, I'm a really conservative when it

comes to like, commercializing a business. I am much to the

probably irritation of some of my investors. I believe I want

to build a sustainable business that will generate revenue, and

will I build, I want to have a legacy, I want to build

something that will last that will have some some longevity,

right? I'm not here to pump up a company, you know, get the

valuation pumped up, and then you know, exit, and then there's

no product again, that's because I'm an engineer. I want to build

If I build it, a lot people use it. And it should work. And it

should, it should be a quality, right? So if you look at this,

I'm really conservative when it comes to also like launching a

business. I've never frankly, understood the unit economics of

how app based in even traditional Gaelic, I know how

traditional games work, like traditional games, that's a

different story, right? Like, I totally get what it like when

you talk about mental health resilience, or these health apps

and stuff. First of all, in healthcare, nobody pays for it.

Believe it, it's ironic. No one will pay for anything,

especially in the US. Because the assumption are they did well

my case, I paid my insurance for this. Right. So that's one

thing. So it's very hard in health and well being to

monetize. And now if you talk about an app, what are you

monetize it? Right? Okay, like what's, what are you actually

what's the consumer paying for? And so, a lot of these

companies, they end up in this content model, where it's, Hey,

we've got this new thing for you to listen to, we've got load,

right and it's content. II teach by doing we don't teach by

telling, we teach by doing. And so in I just couldn't I just

honestly couldn't get the unit economics. Like in my head. I'm

like, I don't understand the amount of marketing you have to

spend. Now granted, interestingly enough, our

marketing when we did we did some trialing on Facebook,

right, just just the general responses and, and one of the

things about Healthcare's, you have to run dual paths, because

your buyer is ticked generally, like even an employer, they're

less conservative than an insurance company or health

system. Right? And understandably so, right.

because there's risk associated, especially when talking about

mental health, like there's good reason for the Conservatives not

saying that, but when the buyer is that conservative, you have

to de risk. And the way that you have to de risk is to show that

look, people will use this, right? So you have to run a

parallel path. And it's kind of funny, because it wasn't until

even two or three years ago, not even, probably in the last year

or two, have people even appreciated that you additional,

like a nursery point for healthcare startups, because

they were always like, pick one or the other. And the reality of

it is, is to healthcare shops have to run both. Because they

have to show the buyer here, here's what the end users thinks

and b2b etc. Right? Yeah. Right. But but there's no, it's a

leader to show adoption. So when we ran Facebook ads, for

example, at one point, it was pretty interesting, because our,

our user acquisition costs were a third of the industry average,

a quarter to a third. And there were so much word of mouth. It

was it was pretty, it was pretty, pretty cool. Um, the

question, and we even got a couple of conversions. Right?

But how much we we didn't get a chance to complete the

experiment to figure out how much would we need to, you know,

convert for subscription. But, but the reality of it is, is,

you know, like, you're hiring someone, you're running the ads,

you know, our price point. Commercially, it's like, it's

$120 a year subscription. That's, that's more than a

Kindle. Less than a therapy session, but more than a Kindle.

You know, the buyers,

I don't know at all you might get we always get

subscriptions are lasted maybe two or three months, which is

fine. Right, which is fine, too, we have a monthly and that's

okay, we want to be available for folks. But but as a

business, that's not going to give you sustainable revenue.

And again, the amount of marketing that you need to put

into it. It's substantial, unless, you know, we can get and

generate buzz and word of mouth. But But what's the conversion,

and a lot of these other companies, typically in the

consumer space, especially when it's app based or digital have

some source important digital service, their assumption and

just like games, their assumption is you got a bunch of

people who, like active users who don't pay. And so your trick

is to keep these guys on platform and active, and then a

couple of them will pop up. Right? That will be your super

fans, and those are the ones that are going to spend tons of

money but like, what tons of money are they going to spend? I

don't really want to start upselling people, like maybe

it's different expansion packs, right? Breathing exercises, or

other things to do and learn, right? You know, you can imagine

those kinds of things. But it's, that's a that's a whole

different undertaking. Whereas if you go enterprise. Now,

again, you have to answer things differently, you have to have

different protocols in place, you know, in consumer privacy is

is absolutely a concern. But if you're working with a health

system or insurance, right, then you definitely need to think

about HIPAA, employers definitely do not contrary to

popular belief, they do not want to seek personal information of

their employees, right? They what they want to do is, excuse

me, what they want to do is get information so they can be

responsive to them. Right. So but you know, we need to talk

about that, and how are we offering that? And then there's

different questions, but how do you deploy? How do you scale?

How easy is it to implement? So those are the things that that

you have to answer on the enterprise side, but it gets it

helps in a mind you. A lot of digital health companies,

especially in the mental health care space now are targeting

employers so so it's a very, very competitive and crowded

space. And that being said, we hear time and time again that

this solution is like nothing that people have seen before.

Even in the crowded space, and when they look at our numbers

and metrics, and how we're able to perform against industry

standards. It's it I had a I was on a customer call just

yesterday and they're like they're against that made you

the benchmarks? It's not that not that high of a hurdle to

overcome, right. But the benchmarks but this one employer

was saying, you know, we have tried a lot of things, employees

don't use use it, but we know they're struggling, you know,

center concern, their concern is that if they offer something, we

want people to use it, right? It's like, why am I going to

like, right? Like, if you buy something for yourself, you

know, whether it's an app, or a peloton bike, or you know, that

new, new new gadget for your kitchen? I think most people

most most will be like, well, am I going to use it? Is it worth

the investment? Right, and the employer is going to ask the

same thing. So they want to make sure people are using it. And

they're saying, you know, we've tried a lot of different

solutions in no one's adopting it. And then when I showed them

the results of what we were able to do for another client, they

were like, Oh, wow, that's pretty impressive.

Um, so I want to just make sure that this this

point is kind of clear. But what I'm hearing the difference

between kind of building something from the enterprise

from that side versus going straight from business to

consumer on that side, is you might not have as faster

explosive growth on the enterprise side, but we've have

as a more sustainable and consistent revenue model that

depends a little bit less on user acquisition and marketing.

Yep. Right. And here's the other important point.

Your

lifetime value of your consumer has to be higher than your

customer acquisition. So like, for example, when they call them

whales in games, right? They'll spend 1000s. Right? I was on a,

I was talking to somebody and he's like, Yeah, I he knew

someone who spent $30,000 on a

game. Okay.

I'm on another note, I was on Twitter. Don't ask me why this

showed up in my feed. But there was the Kim Kardashian mobile

game, that's how she actually got started was Yeah, right.

I remember that one.

While still going. And, and literally just this was a very

recently, like, within the last week of Twitter was like, I

spent hundreds of dollars on it.

Right. So what are you benchmarking against? Like? And

what's, what's the average lifetime revenue of user? So,

and and in consumer, like, for most apps, it's just really hard

to recoup those costs, like the willingness to pay doesn't cover

the cost to get the user.

Gotcha. Jarick sense. Okay. Right. Yeah, that

massive question.

Right. It just, it's, I haven't been able to see it add

up, you know, and I've got some friends who are really smart.

You know, and actually, I had one friend, who is a partner in

McKinsey, fairly smart guy, went to business school with him. I

also did my MBA at the University of Chicago. And so,

I, I know, he's gay, what do you do? Oh, I'm doing my app and you

know, hanging out doing what's right, and, you know, just

grinding it out. And you know, and he starts asking all these

kinds of questions and stuff and then at that point, and I didn't

know this, right, um, but I guess he was just kind of

interviewing me and doing his due diligence to see if maybe he

wants to invest doesn't tell me this. Right. But okay, that's

fine. And you know, I'm, I don't want to say I'm naive, but I'm

not one of these people who like I just don't have time and I

don't mind mind does not hardwired to be like what's

their angle and try to figure out what they're doing. I'm

like, Oh, he wants to talk and he wants to talk about okay,

fine, right, like and at one point, you know, I remember this

I was getting pushed by a lot of people several years ago to go

direct. I was getting pushed by a lot of people, even some of my

strategics strategic investors so we in life, right we have now

we have five at the time we had four but I'm So our strategics

include ARP, they include Bayer pharmaceuticals and includes

next Q jumpstart foundry tabula rasa. So and, and you know, now

mind you none of these people where I was getting these this

direction from super smart, highly qualified, worked in

great companies with great positions, none of them ever

built anything or launched anything. And everything of

their advice was what they were reading and seeing it was very

academic. Right? Because I just went through this math in my

head about how the hell you're going to make money. Right?

Because, again, I want a sustainable business. So, and

especially in the reason another reason I have to do that, as a

woman of color, raising money is always a challenge. So I have to

be

willing to ask you about that. Yeah.

So I have to do that on my own. Okay, and then you know,

and then I always get the oh, well, you're not selling it easy

enough, or you're just not a good salesperson or whatever.

And I'm like, Yeah, that might be the case. And if that is the

case, then there's even more reason that I need to make it

more sustainable on my own. Right? If I'm a shitty salesman,

okay, fine, then that's even more reason why, if I have that

weakness, then let's solve the weakness and other way rather

than you know, upping my my showmanship skills or whatever

presentation skills or whatever it is, right. I'm generally

think is the case, frankly, but so, so, um, so he, so I'm

getting a lot of this advice, especially around this time, it

was very, very frustrating for me, because, you know, I'd ask

these people, and then it gets these weird questions to like,

what can you scale? And you know, I'm a technologist, and

I'm like, it's on the App Store. So when someone tells me and

asked me that question about scale, I think can you reach can

your technology support? Will the infrastructure crumble or

break down? Do you have a break points, right, or response time

gaps, right, like, that kind of stuff? Does the app crash,

right? Is there UI UX issues that make it hard on board? Like

very product centric stuff? back end stuff? And like, what are

they talking about scale? I'm like, like, we're global. And we

have global users like, so. So then, some of this is gonna come

together in a second. Um, it wasn't until so this was like

three or two, right before the pandemic 20 2019 or so. Right?

2019. Right. And it wasn't until this past few months ago. Did I

realize what some of these people were asking about?

Because I think I asked about it, or somehow it came up. When

they talk about ability to scale they were talking about the fact

that you didn't raise I haven't raised in their minds mind. We

didn't raise enough money. Stability to scale means Have

you raised enough money

to grow your team.

As far as they were concerned, yeah. And so when you hear a

question, and you don't understand what the hell they're

talking about, ask them. Because I have never heard up until this

point. Now, mind you, right. This was just this. I've been

doing this for nine years. I've never heard an investor. Talk

about ability to scale, translating into how much money

have you already raised? So can you grow?

Up? Yeah, that's an interesting metric to use. I

was going this actually leads in quite nicely, but I was going to

ask you, and this is obviously, I mean, this, this follows along

the same lines. But you have been working on Whitesburg and

working in kind of startups for a bit now, how has how have

investor relations change as a woman of color and even just

even just in the environment in general, because we had

obviously an explosion in tech growth in the early 2010. And

you're right, it was totally all about growth. It was how fast

you grow. How fast you grow, was not about sustainable revenue

model at all. Oh,

I call it the stuffing the goose theory.

But how has How have things like changed over

time and what has been better or worse different than you've seen

and especially for people who are looking for funding Right

now, what are some of the good things? And some of the

challenges?

Yeah, yeah. I'll get to that in a second. Can I finish

the other story too? Absolutely circular. But yeah, but but the

other thing, so I was getting this from friends, right? I'm

getting this from friends I'm getting like go to direct

consumer. In my one friend then finally tells me and this will

also segue into this next question. He's like, well, then

he finally real reveals his cards. Well, I was thinking I

was going to invest in you, but I don't think you have a

business model. And I think I think you're gonna fail. Oh, and

about two months later, we got our strategic investor from

investment from bear. Wow. And it had I followed the guidance

and advice from all these Well, meaning, but frankly, people who

just really didn't understand the space we're in and what

we're trying to do. I wouldn't have been positioned to get that

strategic investment. Because we did a lot of clinical

validation. We had done a lot of work on how does it get paid?

The back end and the data, right? I mean, as a result, now,

we'd won at that point, like 25 Global Health Innovation Awards.

Now we're over 30, including the first video games when a Surgeon

General, right. And mind you, you know that he was one of the

first, right, but I continued to get these kinds of comments from

people. Right, and it was a constant diversion, frankly, and

it was attacks because it was diverting my attention from what

I really needed to do. Which was broke business. So how have I

seen things change? Well, I mean, some of this is really

personal, right? Like, some of this is going to be so dependent

on the individual. where you're coming from how, you know, just,

frankly, your style and how people react to the style.

Right. So I'm, I'm pretty good Garius as you can kind of pick

up

I have an idea of what you might

be reserved person to begin with. Um, it's because I become

less reserved, you know, when I was in corporate, I could, you

know, button it up, and I can still snap into it, right. But

the time constant on that has gotten much less. To button it

up, so to speak. Um, no, but you know, I, I'm pretty good. Arius

really approachable. I don't take myself too seriously. You

can if you're doing what we're doing, right, and I'm fairly

empathetic, right. And I think, for a lot of people that for a

lot of people in the business context, there's an I got this

more in corporate that oh, she's superficial, she's frivolous,

she's not serious. And that was far from the truth, right? Like,

if you look at my background, the organizations I've worked

at, you look at the schools, I've gone to the performances, I

formance. I've driven for those organizations, the best

practices, I've set up the recognition I've gotten, that's

far from the case, I just don't need to wear it on my sleeve as

a badge of honor, saying, hey, here I am, I'm more interested

in learning from people and I'm more interested in contributing,

rather than talking about stuff accomplished. So, um, so I think

so some of these, so this is just context to state, what I'm

going to share is probably, it may or may not apply to others,

right? Because I have a very different personality. I grew up

in engineering, right? So I was always surrounded by guys. Some

of them were asshats. But a lot of people are really nice. And

and for the most part, you know, I had some challenges, like the

traditional challenges that a woman engineer would have. And

you know, I started my career in manufacturing at Kodak, for

example, working on like, I was really fascinated again, by

manufacturing, and this really cool automated robotic wide

stuff like cameras, the little disposable cameras, which I

guess are retro now. So, but But you know, and I just thought

that was like the bee's knees at that time. And, and that was a

tough environment. Um, so So you know, I got some You know, a

thicker skin? Potentially? I would say I'm very objective in

my, again, very processed and sort of analytical, some very

systems, very objective in my decision making process my

judgment, right, so I'm going to bring that to the table. Um, so

So um, so when I started, I did not have any delusions, like I

just assumed I wasn't going to no one was going to give me

like, that was my blanket assumption when I launched.

There weren't that many women of color watching companies. Right,

let alone in health care. I mean, it started happening,

right, which is great. Great. And I'm glad I'm at least part

of that cohort, and not even earlier on because it would have

been, Oh, I think I think but even then, you know, I was

trying to network, I'm in Seattle, so it was trying to

network in the community there. It's a community that

understands business enterprise software really well. Health

care was something which to my mind, I didn't really understand

why they would shy away from it. It made no sense to me

personally, but it was just something they were very

hesitant to delve into. At the time, if there was healthcare

investments, it was med devices, digital health was still new.

And frankly, it was dismissed. It was rather late, even even

the healthcare investors, you're all that's not a real like it

even today, frankly, I am still, it's still frustrating to see

how it's still not considered at least in this region. A separate

it's, it's acknowledged as a separate vertical within

healthcare. Even though the rest of the country in the rest of

the world kind of has figured that out. That seems to be a

challenge here for this reason, region.

And so when I was

launching, I would go around, um, I had not in my

career, I had leadership roles, I had just started to get into

some of the management roles as well, right. Early on in my

career, I was actually I had a, I was on a fast track, and then

the recession hit two recessions hit right, or No, I was the one.

And that just kind of derailed everything. Right. And so then I

had to, like rebuild from that point. And incorporate that was

also one of my frustrations is that I wasn't being saved. My

accomplishments, my capability, I wasn't. I was also in very

hyper competitive environments, and I just didn't do well. I

don't like I didn't like it. I don't like hyper competitive,

I've been in enough of them. And that's not the way I want to

spend my life. Again, I'm a builder. Right, and you don't

build things by competing against. So it wasn't an

environment that and that's, and I think that was one thing. So I

think when I launched my journey, there was elements of

myself that frankly, I needed to also address, you know, and heal

some extent, and, and as a CEO, here's the thing, as a CEO,

whether you like it or not, you are the face of the company. And

if you cannot present in a way that gives people that sense of

confidence, the sense that you are, you have the ability to

handle complexity.

You know, they're not

in a team, you have to deal with a woman of color, you have to

even over wrap. But keep in mind, at that time, I had this

crazy idea to I want to put games in healthcare, and I'm

gonna do like this thing around mental health, like what the

fuck is that? Like? Everybody was like, I would literally get

this is never gonna work. So there's a function of the idea

and where I'm at, right? So you're gonna get skepticism and

dismissiveness. And there always be some reason Oh, well, it's a

crowded space. So they're gonna dismiss you. Oh, well, it's been

done before and it failed. So they'll dismiss you. I've never

heard this and they'll notice you.

They're gonna give you some reason.

And it wasn't until I consistently started performing.

people's reactions started changing but also I realized

that for myself, um there were a lot of there were even some

friends of mine. They would they didn't treat like they would the

way they would react. Me, I will you know, then I actually had to

ask myself these questions were, and I had actually internalize

this. And this is really interesting story. But I want

you to start asking myself if if they were they were die. If I

was a guy, would they talk to me this way? Would they ask these

kinds of questions? And if the question was, if I didn't, if I

couldn't say definitively, no, then I'm like, wait a minute,

there's something going on. Right? Because I'm also I've

worked with men all my life been around, that's not in some

intense environment. So like, that wasn't the case, right? But

there was this I call it the concept of presumption of

competence. And that's wasn't happening. It was very rare.

And, and, and I had one, and I had internalized it so much that

I was interviewing a marketing candidate one time. And I was

telling him about, you know, at this point, we'd want about

maybe five or five, four or five reports. And I'll tell you, them

and you know, we got some great patient stories and stuff, we

had launched our beta. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm really lucky

that I, you know, gotten this far. And you say, you're not

lucky your skill. I had I had it took a white guy. Yep. And then

I realized, okay, I'm not even owning it myself. And so, um,

and, and I also stopped associating with people who

weren't going to give me the time of day, I'm like, Okay,

fine.

I'll see you later. I'm gonna talk for you.

But I got I got done. Like, some people will talk about that

tenacity, right. And I talked about this in a Kaufman video,

I, that I'm like, No, I am of that ilk. Find your tribe. Don't

try to convince people who don't want to be convinced, find your

tribe. And work on it be tenacious, in the problem you're

solving. Don't be tenacious and trying to convince me. And so,

so I just literally have no patience, I suffer fools even

less. What I've seen, I've seen women and even in myself now I'm

much more comfortable talking about the challenges I've had

I've no issue. Like, if I were to bring up in 2013 They've

looked like you're making excuses.

Not to understand Yeah. Right. And getting to understand it.

You know, and, and, and it also took, you know, and look in

fairness. i It's a brand new concept. It was a brand new idea

I needed to out right, and and to do that I had to find my

tribe. But that meant I went global to find my tribe. Because

I wasn't here where I live.

Yeah, one. And I think we at least, the world

seems more receptive to that lately. I want to kind of, um, I

want to summarize what we've talked about so far. So we can

and I think you've given so many pieces of wisdom. But there's a

specific question I like to ask at the end of every episode that

that is a chance for you to just kind of summarize everything

that you've said so far up. So let me start by talking about we

we began with a discussion on lights right in the development

of CES, right. So this right is a way to become a Zen master by

leading Sachs third adventure, Fox, the fox is the main

character to love, great, great name, great character. And the

whole goal of citizens right is to teach skills by actually

doing so you're able to learn journaling, breathing,

meditation, gratitude, practice, some other things that can help

you actually deal with stress and difficult mental health

environments without specifically talking about those

environments, rather, by doing things that actually help

alleviate some of the issues that we talked a lot about

healthcare startups and how you are one that is started at the

enterprise level. So since right works with employers to get the

product to employee, which is one way you can be healthcare

startup, you also mentioned that you do have a direct b2c model

as in you have an app on the App Store that's available for

purchase. But that when it comes to those models, user

acquisition can be really tough. And often you're spending more

on actually getting users on the platform, then their willingness

to pay. So it can be helpful to have a really solid kind of

revenue stream through enterprise development. That

gives you good footing that gives you the chance to develop

and to do r&d without having the pressure of growth, growth,

growth needing to get users needing to figure out that

monetization strategy. We also talked about how it can be

definitely challenging to get investments in healthcare and

being a woman of color compounds that issue for you. It took a

lot of a of reaching all I needed. It also took a lot of

you not knowing when you're being interviewed for

investments, but it took it took knowing the market, knowing your

vision for what the market needed. And sticking by that and

finding the right strategic investors to actually go for

that, which meant may be different than in a straight up

VC type of investor, it meant going further strategic in the

in the corporate investors instead. But that was a way for

you to stay true to your vision and permission. And we also

talked about how staying true to your vision, your mission met

networking with people who will presume competence networking,

leaving you saying goodbye to all of that and moving forward

to find the people who actually did. So with all that on the

table, the thing that I like to end with is a moment of

reflection. So what is one thing you would like to tell your

younger self about getting into the gaming industry, but also

the health and technology sector and being successful? Um, I

think I think the biggest thing,

in terms of success for anybody is giving, especially in

the world we're in today. It's very tumultuous, highly

uncertain. There's something new happening every day, more so

than before, right? And, and, you know, you and I were

talking, as we were prepping on this call is just how much the

pandemic has really significantly impacted our

lives. Right. And just, and just to be aware of the environment

that you're working in it,

it's really not, we're not back to where it

was, and I don't think we're ever going to go back. So from

that perspective, if you're looking at embarking on

something new, get make sure you're giving yourself the time

to pause. But also, what's really, really important and

what has helped me in the past is, have somebody that you can,

and have someone that is on the journey, a similar pathway as

yourself, because of being a founder, if you don't have a co

founder, which I don't, a lot of people have co founders which

can play that role. But if you don't, it's very isolating, and

it's very, it's a struggle, there's under a lot of pressure,

you're, you're stretched in about 10 different ways. So it's

important to have a network or somebody that you can say, hey,

this is where I'm, you know, a safe place, if you will, where

you can just really be vulnerable, like, that's going

to be really important. I didn't realize how isolating it was,

and a lot of founders talked about that. And so, that gets

your network set up that way, or at least start building it. Get

your finances in order, make sure you can handle this

journey. Be prepared to make those lifestyle changes. Start

living an entrepreneurial lifestyle six months before you

get out if you're thinking about it and see if you're okay with

that, like that means not eating out. That means eating at home.

avocado toast is actually very cheap to make at home and very

nutritious. It's not a shishi thing. It's very healthy and

very cheap. You know, you know, say goodbye to, you know,

splurging on, you know, if you're buying, you know, shoes,

if you're a shoe girl or a bag, um, you have one or two things,

luxury items, right? But, you know, be prepared, are you

willing to give up your credit score, so you can't buy a new

house? I can't my credit shot. I can't buy a house. If I wanted

to buy a new house, I couldn't do that I have a shitty credit.

Because I don't have an income. Right? Like I haven't had an

appreciable income. That's the realities of a founder of color

at least. Even if you get funding, right? Like let's say

they give you you're not going to pay yourself market right.

You know, you might you might pay yourself 100k 120k Maybe,

but in this day and age, that's not a lot.

Right? If that right. So,

um, so you know, there's a lot of things that you need to think

about, because it's if you're going to do this or even in

games, you got to be

prepared. Mentally, you have

to be prepared financially. Right and Then just it'd be

comfortable with that lifestyle. If you go to shows and concerts

in our budget accordingly

Yeah, that's really salient. Yeah. It takes a

lot of gumption to start something. So having a good

support network and being prepared. It's really important.

For sure, yeah, it is. So um, thank you for the

opportunity to talk today.

Hey, I'm supposed to say that birds I was just

going to say that thank you so much for coming on. Where can

people find you follow you learned more about lights brake

light everything? Sure.

So we have a website like sprint.com Li T s pri

t.com. So you can learn more about us there. We have a

YouTube channel with some contents and webinars and other

stuff and pitches we've done. We also are on Twitter at at light

sprite games. You could follow me on Twitter, it's my first and

last name at Swathi survey. And well we have a LinkedIn page

like Sprite LinkedIn page and a Facebook page as well. So we're

not interested people just and also just given all the adverse

health things that Instagram does that really into I don't

think socks a little look good with the filter. So

I think socks lifted no matter what. Um, for

all the listeners out there, thank you so much for joining us

today. Be sure to leave those five star ratings and reviews

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